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UNITED STATES OF AMEEICA. 



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IN BIRD LAND 



IN BIRD LAND 




LEANDER S. KEYSER 



Hast thou named all the birds without a gun? 
Loved the wood-rose, and left it on its stalk? 

Ralph Waldo Emerson: Forbearance 

Teach me half the gladness 

That thy brain must know, 
Such harmonious madness 
From my lips would flow 
The world should listen then, as I am listening now! 

Percy B. Shelley : To a Skylark 




OCT e 



.iv 



ffWAS. 






CH ICAGO 

A. C. McCLURG AND COMPANY 

1894 



[v,^ 



Copyright 

By a. C. McClurg and Co. 

A.D. 1894 



Q- 



NOTE. 

The articles comprising this volume having 
been previously published in various periodi- 
cals of the country, I would desire to tender 
my grateful acknowledgments to the several 
publishers and editors for their uniform cour- 
tesy in permitting me to reprint the papers. 
My observations on birds have been made, 
except when otherwise indicated, in various 
haunts in and about Springfield, Ohio, — a 
region well adapted for ornithological research 

or pastime. 

L. S. K. 

August, 1894, 



CONTENTS. 



Chapter Page 

I. Wayside Rambles 9 

II. Bird Curios ... 24 

III. Winter Frolics 40 

IV. February Outings 58 

V. Arrival of the Birds 64 

VI. Winged Voyagers 76 

VII. Plumage of Young Birds 87 

VIII. Nest-Hunting 92 

IX. Midsummer Melodies ........ no 

X. Where Birds Roost 116 

XI. The Wood-Pewee 127 

XII. A Pair of Night-Hawks 135 

XIII, A Birds' Gala-Day 141 

XIV. Rife with Birds 152 

XV. Various Phases of Bird Life: 

I. Bird Courtship , . . . 160 

II. Bird Nurseries 169 

III. Bird High Schools 185 

IV. Bird Work 193 

V. Bird Play 201 

VI. Bird Deaths 207 

XVI. The Secret of Appreciation 216 

XVII. Browsings in Other Fields 226 

XVIII. A Bird Anthology from Lowell . . . 242 

My Bird List 263 

Index * .... 267 



This way would I also sing^ 

My dear little hillside neighbor! 
A ie7ider carol of peace to bring 

To the sunburnt fields of labor 
Is better than 7naki7ig a loud ado; 

Trill on^ a7nid clover and yarrow I 
There 'j* a heart-beat echoing for you, 

And blessing yott, blithe little sparrow I 

Lucy Larcom. 



IN BIRD LAND. 



WAYSIDE RAMBLES. 

LOOKING out of my study window one fair 
spring morning, I noticed a friend — a pro- 
fessional man — walking along the street, evidently 
taking his '^ constitutional." Having reached the end 
of the brick pavement, he paused, glanced around 
a moment undecidedly, and then, instead of walk- 
ing out into the beckoning fields and woods, turned 
down another street which led into a thickly popu- 
lated part of the city. Surely, I mused, we are not 
all cast in the same mould. While he carefully 
avoided going beyond the suburbs and the beaten 
paths, as if afraid he might soil his poHshed shoes, 
I should have plunged boldly into the country, 
'' across lots," to find some sequestered nook or 
grass-grown by-way, '^ far from human neighbor- 
hood," to hold undisturbed converse with Nature. 
My friend's conduct, however, did not put me in 
a critical mood, but rather stirred some grateful 
reflections on the wise adaptation of all things in 



10 IN BIRD LAND, 

the world of being. How fortunate that men are 
so variously constituted ! If some did not naturally 
choose the bustle and stir and excitement of the 
city, where would be our philanthropists, our How- 
ards and Peabodys and Dodges? On the other 
hand, if others did not voluntarily seek quiet and 
solitude in Nature's unfrequented haunts, the world 
would never have been blessed with a Wordsworth, 
an Emerson, or a Lowell ; and in that case, for some 
of us at leasts life would have been bare and arid. 

It is true, we cannot accept Pope's dictum, " What- 
ever is, is right." We know that many things that 
are, are wrong; but doubtless more things in this 
paradoxical old world are right than moralists some- 
times suppose. To the genuine lover of Nature, and 
especially to the lover of her unbeaten pathways, 
the ringing lines of Emerson come home with 
thrilling power : — 

*' If I could put my woods in song 
And tell what 's there enjoyed, 
All nrien would to my gardens throng, 
And leave the cities void." 

Yet I doubt if any spot in Nature's domain could 
be made so attractive as to overcome most persons' 
natural love of human association. Mayhap even 
if this could be done, it would not be desirable. 
Should all men hie to the woods and leave the 
cities void, it would spoil both the woods and the 
cities. The charm of the woods is their quiet, 
their solitude ; the enchantment of the city, its 



WAVS/DE RAMBLES, 



II 



thronging life and activity. While I may be lone- 
some in a crowd, my neighbor is almost sure to feel 
lonesome in the marsh or the deep ravine. If all 
men loved Nature with a passion that could not be 
controlled, much work would be left undone that is 
indispensable to human life and happiness. I am 
glad, therefore, that there are many birds of many 
kinds ; glad, too, that there are many men of many 
minds. The apostle does well to remind his breth- 
ren in the church that there are " diversities of gifts " 
and ^' diversities of operations," even if all do spring 
from "the same Spirit.'* 
Albeit, as for me, give me 

" A secret nook in a pleasant land, 
Whose groves the frolic fairies planned.*' 

Emerson voices my own feeling when he sings ; — 

" A woodland walk, 
A quest of river-grapes, a mocking thrush, 
A wild rose, or rock-loving columbine, 
Salve my worst wounds ; '* 



for,. 



" What friend to friend cannot convey, 
Shall the dumb bird instructed say." 



And it is true that a wayside ramble will often do, 
by way of self- revelation and conviction, what no 
human voice of chastisement can accomplish. Mr. 
Howells says, in one of his most trenchant analytical 
novels : ^^ If you 're not in first-rate spiritual condition, 
you 're apt to get floored if you undertake to com- 
mune with Nature." There are times when the very 



12 IN BIRD LAND. 

immaculateness of the sky, or the purity of a wood- 
land flower, rebukes one, gives one a keen sense of 
one's sins, and makes one long for absolution; or 
when the pensive moaning of the wind through the 
gray, branchless trees on a winter's day forces on 
the mind a prevision of a judgment about to be 
visited upon one's misdoings. Yet this is seldom 
my own experience while idling in out-of-the-way 
places. Usually I feel soothed and comforted, or, 
at most, a sort of glad melancholy steals over me, 
which is as enchanting as a magician's spell ; while 
I often win exhilaration from the whispering breezes, 
as if they carried a tonic on their pulsing wings. 

On the spring morning on which my friend so 
studiously avoided Nature's by-paths, my stint of 
labor for the day was soon despatched, and then, 
flinging my lunch-bag over my shoulders, I hurried 
across the fields, anxious to put a comfortable dis- 
tance between myself and bothering human tene- 
ments. By noon I had reached a green hollow at 
the border of a woodland, where Nature, to a large 
extent at least, has had her own sweet way. Here, 
on the grassy bank of a rivulet, I sat down to eat my 
luncheon. The spring near by filled my cup with 
ale that sparkles, but never burns ; that quenches 
thirst, but never creates it. Not a human habita- 
tion was in sight ; nothing but the tinkling brook, 
the sloping hills, the quiet woods, and the overarch- 
ing sky. The haunt was not without music. The 
far-away cadences of the bush-sparrows on the hill- 
side filled the place like melodious sunshine. A 



WAYSWE RAMBLES, 1 3 

short distance down the hollow a song-sparrow 
thrummed his harp, while a cooing dove lent her 
dreamy threnody to the wayside trio. Although 
engaged in the prosaic act of eating my luncheon, 
I breathed in an atmosphere of poetry and romance, 
and half expected a company of water-witches and 
dryads to leap upon the greensward before me 
and dance to the music of bird and brook. A 
pagan I am not, — at least, such is my hope ; but 
moods subjunctive sometimes seize me when I do 
not blame the Greeks — aye, rather, when I praise 
them — for peopling the woods with Pan and his 
retinue ; for I feel the influence of a strange, 
mystical, and more than impersonal presence. 

Yes, one's dreams sometimes take on a specula- 
tive cast, even on a day that seems to be " the bridal 
of the earth and sky." In this unfrequented spot 
the birds sing their sweetest carols, be there a human 
ear to hear or not. Do they sing merely for their 
own delectation, these little creatures of a day? 
Is there not far too much sweetness wasted on the 
desert air? Would there not be more purpose in 
Nature could these dulcet strains be treasured in 
some way, so that they might be poured into man's 
appreciative ear? Why has Nature made no pho- 
nographs? Wherefore all this waste of ointment? 
Does Nature encourage the habits of the spend- 
thrift? I recall a summer day when I strolled 
along a deep, lonely ravine. It was at least a mile 
to the nearest human dwelling. Suddenly a clear, 
melodious trill from a song-sparrow's lusty throat 



14 IN BIRD LAND. 

rippled through the stillness, making my pulses 
flutter. Here, doubtless, the little Arion had sung 
his roundels all summer long, and perhaps I had 
been the only person who had heard him, and then 
I had caught only a few tantalizing strains — simply 
enough to give a taste for more. Why was the 
peerless triller apparently burying his talents in this 
soHtary haunt? 

It may be true of bird song, as of the recluse 
flower, that "beauty is its own excuse for being;'* 
but I am not ashamed to record my confession of 
faith, my creed, on this matter; not my dreamy 
cogitations with ifs and 7nayhaps, There is a divine 
ear which catches every strain of wayside melody, 
and appreciates it at its true value. Thus, no beauty 
or sweetness is ever lost, no bird or flower is really 
an anchorite. A bird may flit away in alarm at the 
approach of a human intruder, and may not Hsp a 
note until he is well out of the haunt ; but the same 
songster will unconsciously pour his dithyrambs all 
summer long into the ear of God. Nature was not 
made for man alone ; it was also made for its Cre- 
ator. Never has the brown thrasher sung with such 
enchanting vigor and abandon as he did the other 
day at the corner of the woods when he thought no 
human auditor within ear-shot. He was singing for 
God, albeit unconsciously. 

It is high time to get back to my waysiding, if I 
may coin a word. You must go to an out-of-the- 
way resort, far from the din of loom and factory, to 
feel the quaint, delicate fancy of Sidney Lanier's 
lines, — - 



WAYS/DE RAMBLES, 1 5 

"Robins and mocking-birds that all day long 
Athwart straight sunshine weave cross-threads of song, 

Shuttles of music." 

The wayside rambler often is witness of delight- 
ful bird-pranks that must escape other eyes. On a 
bright day in February I strolled to the hollow to 
which I have already referred. The sun was melt- 
ing the ice-mantle from the brook, and causing the 
snow to pour in runlets down the banks. In a 
broad, shallow curve of the stream the tree-sparrows 
and song- sparrows were taking a bath. I watched 
them for a long time. Some of them would remain 
in the ice-cold water for from three to five minutes, 
fluttering their wings and tails in perfect glee, and 
sending the pearl-drops and spray gUmmering into 
the air. Their ablutions done, they would fly up to 
the saplings near by, and carefully preen and dry 
their moistened robes. 

It was in the depth of the woods that my saucy 
black-cap, the titmouse, clambered straight up the 
vertical bole of an oak sapling, as if he had learned 
the trick from the brown creeper or the white- 
breasted nuthatch. No less interesting was the 
conduct of the downy woodpecker, that little drum- 
major of the woods. He is the tilter par excellence 
of the woodpecker family. He flings himself in the 
most reckless manner from trunk to branch, and 
from branch to twig, often alighting back- downward 
on the slenderest stems. Shall I describe one of 
his odd tricks? I had often seen him clinging to 
the slender withes of the willows at the border of 



1 6 IN BIRD LAND. 

the swamp, and had wondered how he could hold 
himself with his claws to so meagre a support. It 
was a problem. How much I longed to solve it ! 
However, for a long time the bird so completely 
baffled me that I felt like another Tantalus. One 
winter day, however, he happened to be quite near 
the ground as I stood beneath the willows, so that 
I could see just how he accomplished the mysteri- 
ous feat. Imagine my surprise ! He did not cling 
to the wdthes with his claws at all, as he clings to a 
tree-trunk or a large bough, but grasped the slender 
perches with his feet^ precisely as if they were hands, 
flinging his long toes, like fingers, clear around the 
stems, one foot above the other. In ascending, he 
would go foot over foot ; in descending, he would 
simply loosen his hold slightly and slip down. Sir 
Isaac Newton may have made more important dis- 
coveries, but he did not feel prouder or happier 
when he solved the binomial theorem than did I 
w^hen my little avian problem was solved. I am not 
aware that any one else has ever described this 
performance, and am strongly tempted to announce 
it as an original discovery. Yet a certain writer 
once declared, patronizingly, that there are some 
writers — himself excepted, of course — on natural 
history themes who proclaim as original discoveries 
many facts that are perfectly familiar to every tyro 
in science. Spite of the scornful reflection, however, 
it is my modest opinion that there are very few 
observers who have seen a woodpecker ascending a 
willow-withe foot over foot. 



IVAVSIDE /^AMBLES. I 7 

Many, many a cunning bird prank would have 
been missed had I kept, like the majority of pedes- 
trians, to the beaten track. There, for example, 
is that odd Kttle genius in mottled robes, the brown 
creeper, who has performed a sufficient number of 
quaint gambols to repay me for all the time and 
effort expended in pursuing my wayside rambles. 
He is always sin generis, apparently priding himself 
on his eccentricities, like some people you may 
know. A genuine arboreal creeper, he almost in- 
variably coasts up hill. Unlike his congeners, the 
nuthatch and the creeping warbler, he never goes 
head-downward. Dear me, no ! Whether it is 
because it makes him Hght-headed, or he regards 
it as bad form, I am unable to say. He does not 
even hitch down backward after the manner of the 
woodpeckers, but marches up, up, up, until he 
thinks it time to descend, which he does by taking 
to wing, bounding around in an arc as if he were 
an animated rubber ball. You may almost imagine 
him saying : '' Pah ! such vulgar sport as creeping 
head-downward may be well enough for mere 
plebeians like the nuthatches and the striped 
creepers, but it is quite beneath the caste of a 
patrician like myself! Tseem ! tseemf'' At rare 
intervals he will slip down sidewise for a short 
distance, in a slightly oblique direction, especially 
when he comes to a fork of the branches. 

However, he does not think it beneath his dignity 
to take a promenade on the under side of a hori- 
zontal bough. One day as I watched him doing 



1 8 IN BIRD LAND, 

this, he reached a point where the limb made an 
obtuse angle by bending obliquely downward. Now 
what would he do? Would he really hitch down 
that branch head-foremost, only for once? By no 
means. Catch him committing such a breach of 
creeper decorum ! He suddenly spread his wings 
and hurled himself to the lower end of that oblique 
section of the branch, and then ambled up to the 
angle in regular orthodox fashion. You will never 
find him doing anything to give employment to the 
heresy hunters 1 ^ 

Have any of my fellow-observers ever seen this 
merry-andrew convert himself into a whirligig? I 
once witnessed this droll performance, which seemed 
almost like a vagary. A creeper was chnging to a 
large oak-tree near the base, when he took it into 
his crazy Uttle pate, for what earthly — or unearthly — 
reason I know not, to wheel around like a top several 

1 Some months after the foregoing had appeared in the 
columns of a popular journal I had occasion to modify one 
assertion. For many years I had been studying the creeper, 
and had never seen him descend a tree or bough head-first 
until one autumn day while loitering in the woods. A creeper 
was hitching up the stem of a sapling in his characteristic 
manner ; as I drew near, he seemed to catch a glimpse of a 
tidbit in his rear, near the sapling's root. In his extreme 
haste to secure it before I drove him away, he wheeled 
around, scuttled down over the bark head-foremost a distance 
of perhaps two feet, picked up his morsel, and then dashed 
out of sight, as if ashamed of his breach of creeper etiquette, 
probably to eat humble pie at his leisure. That was in the 
autumn of 1892. Since then no creeper, to my knowledge, 
has been guilty of a similar offence against the convenances. 



IVAVS/DE RAMBLES. 1 9 

times in quick succession. He rested a moment, 
and then repeated the comedy. 

On another occasion a creeper was preening his 
ruffled feathers, having evidently just taken a bath ; 
and how do you suppose he went about it ? In quite a 
characteristic fashion, you may rest assured. Instead 
of sitting crosswise on a perch, as most birds would 
have done, he clung to the vertical bole of a large 
oak-tree, holding himself firmly against the shaggy 
bark, and daintily straightening out every feather 
from his breast to his flexible tail. Growing tired 
of this position — apparently so, at least — he 
shuffled up to a fork made by the trunk and a large 
limb, where he found a more comfortable slanting 
perch on which to complete his toilet. Once, after- 
ward, I saw a creeper arranging his plumes in the 
same way. 

But the quaintest exploit of this bird still remains 
to be described. One autumn day, while rambling 
along the foot of a range of steep cHffs, I caught sight 
of one of these birds darting from a tree toward the 
perpendicular wall of rock. For a few moments I 
lost him, but followed post-haste, muttering to my- 
self, " What if I should find the little clown climbing 
up the face of the cliif ! That would be a perform- 
ance worth describing to my bird-loving friends, 
wouldn't it?'* (Surely a monomaniac may talk 
aloud to himself.) I could scaicely believe my 
eyes, for the next moment my happy presenti- 
ment was realized ; there was the creeper scaling 
the vertical face of the cliff, with as much ease and 



20 IN BIRD LAND, 

aplomb, apparently, as a fly creeping up the smooth 
surface of a wmdow-pane ! Then he flew ahead a 
short distance, and began mounting the cUff where 
its face was quite smooth and hard. Presently he 
encountered a bulging protuberance, and tried to 
creep along the oblique under side of it ; but 
that feat proved to be beyond his skill, agile as he 
was, and so he abandoned the attempt, and swung 
away to another part of the vertical wall. I have 
never seen, in any of the manuals which I have con- 
sulted, a description of a similar performance ; and 
if any of my readers have ever witnessed such a 
'^coruscation" of creeper genius, I should be glad 
to hear from them. 

In one's out-of-the-way saunterings, one dashes 
' up against many a faunal problem that defies, even 
while it challenges, solution. On a cold day of 
early winter I was strolling along the bare, wind- 
swept banks of a river, keeping my eyes alert, as 
usual, for bird curios. In the small bushes that 
fringed the bank were some cunningly placed nests. 
In the bottom of one of them lay many seeds of 
dogwood berries, with the kernels bored out, — the 
work, no doubt, of the crested tits. But there were 
no dogwood-trees within twenty-five rods of the 
place ! Why had the birds carried the shells to this 
nest, and dropped them into it? This is all the 
more curious because it was not a tit's nest, but 
very likely a cat-bird's. One can only surmise that 
the tits had gathered these seeds in the fall, and 
stowed them away in the nest for winter use, and 



-■W^MMr 



WAVS/DE /GAMBLES. 21 

then had eaten out the kernels when hunger drove 
them to it. That would be in perfect keeping with 
the habits of these thrifty little providers for the 
morrow. 

During the winter of 1892 -1893 a red-bellied 
woodpecker, often called the zebra-bird, took up 
his residence in my woodland. (I call it mine by 
a sort of usufruct, because I ramble through its 
pleasant archways or sit in its quiet boudoirs at all 
hours and in all seasons.) With the exception of 
several brief absences, for which I could not account, 
the woodpecker remained until the following spring, 
giving me some delightful surprises. It was the 
first winter he had shown the good grace to keep 
me company. Perhaps he was lazy ; or he may 
have been a clumsy flier; or perchance he got 
separated from his fellows by accident, and so was 
left behind in the autumn when the southward pil- 
grimage began. 

He was, by all odds, the handsomest woodpecker 
I had ever seen. His entire crown and hind-neck 
were brilliant crimson, which fairly shimmered like 
a flambeau when the sun peeped through a rift in 
the clouds and shone upon it; and then his back 
was beautifully mottled and striped with black and 
white, while his tail was bordered with a broad band 
of deep black. What a splendid picture he made, 
too, whenever he spread his wings and bolted from 
one tree to another ! I wish an artist could have 
caught him on the wing, and transferred him to 
canvas. He performed a trick that was new to 



2 2 IN BIRD LAND. 

me, and did it several times. He would dash to 
some twigs, balance before them a moment on the 
wing, pick a nit or a worm from a dead leaf-clump, 
and then swing back to his upright perch. Once 
he found a grain of corn in a pocket of the bark, 
placed there, perhaps, by a nuthatch; but he did 
not seem to care for johnny-cake, and so he dropped 
it back into the pocket. How cunningly he canted 
his head and peered into the crannies of the bark 
for grubs, calling, Chack ! chack ! 

During the entire winter he uttered only this 
harsh, stirring note, half jocose, half spiteful ; but, 
greatly to my surprise, when spring arrived, espe- 
cially if the weather happened to be pleasant, he 
began to call, K-t-r-r! k-t-r-r I precisely like a 
red-headed woodpecker; indeed, at first I laid 
siege to every tree, looking in vain for a red-head 
come prematurely northward, until I discovered the 
trick of my winter intimate, the red-belHed wood- 
chopper. Why it should have been so I cannot 
explain ; but whenever a cold wave struck this lati- 
tude during the spring, he would invariably revert 
to his harsh Chack! chack! and then when the 
breezes grew balmy again, he would resume his 
other reveille, making the woods echo. I also dis- 
covered — it was a discovery to myself, at least — 
that the red-belHed is a drummer, like most of his 
relatives ; but not once did he thrum his merry 
ra-ta-ta before spring arrived, — another avian 
conundrum for the naturalist to beat his brains 
against. 



WAYS IDE J? AMBLES. 2^ 

But hold ! I might go rambling on in this way 
forever, like Tennyson's brook, — or, possibly, like 
Ixion revolving on his wheel, — describing the odd 
pranks witnessed in my wayside rambles. It is 
high: time, however, to call a halt; yet, after a brief 
breathing-space, these miscellanies will be resumed 
in the next chapter, which may, with some degree 
of propriety, be entitled ^^ Bird Curios.'* 



24 



IN BIRD LAND. 



11. 



BIRD CURIOS. 



EVERY observer of birds and animals has 
doubtless amassed many facts of intense 
interest — at all events, of intense interest to him- 
self — which he has not been able to adjust to any 
systematic arrangement he may have made of his 
material. That is true of the incidents described in 
this chapter. It will, therefore, necessarily partake 
of the nature of bric-a-brac. If it were not so self- 
complimentary, I should dub it bird mosaic, and 
have done. The reader will perhaps be more dis- 
posed to trace a resemblance to an eccentric old 
woman's " crazy quilt ; " and if he prefers the home- 
Her and less poetical title, I shall not complain. 

But even a bit of patchwork must be begun 
somewhere, and so I shall plunge at once in medias 
res. 

The day was one of the fairest of early spring. 
How shall I describe it ? No sky could have been 
bluer, no fields greener. The earth smiled under 
the favoritism of the radiant heavens in happy 
recognition. My steps were bent along the green 
banks of a winding creek in northern Indiana. 
Suddenly a loud, varied bird song fell on my ear 



BIRD CURIOS. 25 

and brought me to a full stop. It swept down lilt- 
ingly from a high, bushy bank some rods back from 
the stream, and at once proclaimed itself as the 
rhapsody of the cat-bird. Anxious to watch the 
brilliant vocalist in his singing attitudes, I ap- 
proached the acclivity, and soon espied him in the 
midst of the dense copse, which was not yet covered 
with foliage. He redoubled his efforts when he saw 
an appreciative auditor standing near. Presently a 
quaint impulse seized his throbbing, music-filled 
bosom. He swung gracefully to the ground, picked 
up a fragment of newspaper, leaped up to his perch 
again, and then, holding the paper harp in his beak, 
resumed his song with more vigor than before. All 
the while his beady eyes sparkled with good-natured 
raillery, as if he expected me to laugh at his unique 
performance ; and, of course, I was able to accom- 
modate him without half an effort. An errant gust 
of wind suddenly wrenched the bit of paper from 
his bill and bore it to the ground. The minstrel 
darted after, and straightway recovered his elusive 
prize, flew up to his perch, and again roused the 
echoes of woodland and vale with his rollicking 
song, the paper harp imparting a peculiar resonance 
to his tones ; while his air of banter seemed to 
challenge me to a musical contest. I laughingly 
declined in the interest of my own reputation. 

He was one of the choicest minstrels of bird land 
I have ever heard, — barring the sex, a Jenny Lind 
or an Adelina Patti, — his voice being of excellent 
timbre^ his tones pure and liquid, and his technical 



2 6 IN BIRD LAND. 

execution almost perfect. Ever since that day I 
have been the avowed friend of the catbird, — in 
truth, his champion, ready at any moment, in 
season and out, to take up the glove in his defence 
against every assailant. Some very self-conscious 
human performers — people who themselves live in 
glass houses — have accused him of singing to be 
heard, making him out vain and ambitious. Well, 
w^hat if he does? Why do his human compeers 
sing or speak or write ? Certainly not purely for 
their own delectation, but also, in part at least, to 
catch the appreciative ear and eye of the public, and 
win a bit of applause. " Let him that is without sin 
among you first cast a stone." He who scoffs at 
my plumbeous-hued choralist makes me his enemy, 
— not the chorahst's, but the scoffer's. So let the 
latter beware ! 

I leave the cat-bird, however, to his own resources 
— - he is well able to take care of himself — to tell 
what the birds were doing during a recent spring, 
which fought in a very desultory manner its battle 
with the north winds. Special attention is called to 
the laggard character of the season because a tardy 
spring is a sore ordeal to the student of bird life, 
postponing many of his most longed-for investiga- 
tions. The spring to which I refer (1892) was pro- 
vokingly slow in its approach, and yet it developed 
some traits of bird character that were interesting. 
For instance, the first week in April was a seducer, 
being quite bland, starting the buds on many trees, 
and putting the migrating fever into the veins of a 



BIRD CURIOS. 27 

number of species of birds. But the snow-storms 
and fierce northern blasts that came later were very 
hard on both birds and buds. Many a chorus was 
sung during the pleasant weather, but on more than 
one day afterward the cheerful voices of the feathered 
choir were hushed, while the songsters themselves 
sought refuge from the storm in every available 
nook, where they sat shivering. One cannot always 
repress the interrogatory why Nature so frequently 
stirs hopes only to blast them ; but it is not the 
business of the empirical observer to question her 
motives or her manners, — rather to study her as 
she is, without asking why. 

Cold as April was, some birds were hardy enough 
to go to nest-building. Among these were the robins, 
whose blushing bosoms could be seen everywhere in 
grove and field. On the seventh of the month a 
robin was carrying grass fibres to a half-finished nest 
in the woodland near my house. A week later she 
was sitting on the nest, hugging her eggs close 
beneath her warm bosom, while the tempests howled 
mercilessly about her roofless homestead. It seemed 
to me, one cold morning after a snow-storm, that her 
body shivered as she sat there, and I feared more 
than once that she would freeze to death ; but no 
such fatality befell her, and she resolutely kept her 
seat in her adobe cottage. 

And this reminds me of a bird tragedy described 
to me by a professor in the college located in my 
town. He said that a number of years ago a robin 
built a nest in a tree not far from the site on which 



28 IN BIRD LAND, 

some workmen were erecting a new college building. 
In May a very fierce snow-storm came. One day 
the workmen noticed a half-dozen robins darting 
about the nest on which the hatching bird sat, flying 
at her with sharp cries, striking her with their wings, 
and making use of various other devices to dislodge 
her from the nest. They seemed to realize that she 
was in peril of her life through long inactivity and 
exposure to the cold. But, their efforts were unsuc- 
cessful : she would not leave her nest; her eggs or 
young must have her care at whatever cost. How- 
ever, the poor bird paid dearly for her devotion. 
The next morning — the night had been very cold 
— the workmen found her dead upon the nest. 
My informant vouches for the truthfulness of the 
story, and says that he himself saw the faithful 
mother on the nest after she had been frozen stiff. 

On the twentieth of April I saw another robin 
sitting close on her nest, which was built on a 
horizontal branch of a willow-tree, not more than 
eight feet from the ground. The raw east wind 
lifted the feathers on her back, as if determined to 
creep through her thick clothing to the sensitive 
skin. A few days earlier a blue jay was seen carry- 
ing lumber to her partly erected nursery in the 
crotch of an oak-tree. A pair of bluebirds, sigh- 
ing out their sorrows and joys, began building in 
one of my bird-boxes during the pleasant early April 
weather ; but when the cold spell came, they wisely 
suspended operations until the storms were overpast 
and they could proceed with safety. A killdeer 



BIRD CURIOS. 29 

plover's nest was found by my farmer neighbor on 
the ninth of April. It was on the ground in an 
open field, with not so much as a spear of grass for 
protection. 

That year the crow blackbirds arrived from the 
south in February, all bedecked in holiday attire, 
the rich purple of their necks scintillating in the 
sunshine. You have perhaps observed the droll an- 
tics of these birds as they sing their guttural 0-gl-ee, 
It is amusing to see them fluff up their feathers, 
spread out their wings and tails, bend their heads 
forward and downward with a spasmodic movement, 
and then emit that queer, gurgling, half-musical 
note. It would seem that the little they sing re- 
quires a superhuman — more precisely, perhaps, a 
super-avian — effort, coming aqueously, one might 
almost say, from some deep fountain in their wind- 
pipes. These contortions do not invariably accom- 
pany their vocal performances, but certainly occur 
quite frequently. The red-wings also often behave 
in a Hke manner ; and both species always spread 
out their tails like a fan when they sing, whether 
they fluff up their plumes and twist their necks or 
not. 

Another bit of bird behavior gave me not a little 
surprise during the same spring. It started this 
query in my mind : Is the white-breasted nuthatch 
a sap-sucker? It has been proved by Mr. Burroughs 
and Mr. Frank Bolles, I think, that the yellow- 
bellied woodpecker is. But how about the frisky 
nuthatch, so versatile in ways and means ? Here is 



30 IN BIRD LAND. ' 

an incident. One day I saw a nuthatch thrusting 
his slender bill into a hole in the bark of a young 
hickory-tree. Nuthatches often hunt for grubs in 
that way, but something about this fellow's conduct 
prompted me to watch him closely for some minutes. 
He bent over the hole with a lingering movement, 
as if sipping something. Presently I slowly ap- 
proached the tree, keeping my eye intent on the 
bird. 

Of course, he flew away on my approach, but 
my eye was never taken from the spot to which he 
had been clinging. Being forced to cHmb the trunk 
of the tree a few feet, what discovery do you sup- 
pose awaited me ? There was a small hole pierced 
through the bark from which the sap was flowing 
down the crannies, and into that fount the little was- 
sailer had been thrusting his bill, with a sort of lin- 
gering motion, precisely as if he had been sippmg 
the sweet liquor. The evidence was sufficient to 
convince me that he had been doing this very un- 
orthodox thing. The real sap-suckers, no doubt, 
had dug the well, for there were a number of them 
in the woods, and the nuthatch had been stealing 
the nectar. Perhaps, however, I wrong him \ he 
may have asked permission of the owner to drink 
from the saccharine fountain. 

The next autumn I took occasion to pry into the 
affairs of my beloved intimates of the woods, and had 
more than one surprise. Some species of birds, like 
some other animals, lay by a supply of food for 
winter, proving that they do take some thought for 



BIRD CURIOS. 31 

the morrow. So far as my observation goes, this pro- 
vident care is displayed only by those birds that are 
winter residents in our more northern latitudes. I 
have never seen any of the vast company of migrants 
making such provision for the proverbial rainy day ; 
and, indeed, it would be unnecessary. To them suf- 
ficient unto the day is the care as well as the evil 
thereof, and so they take their ^' daily bread " as 
they happen to find it. 

Our winter residents, however, are more thrifty, 
as I have observed again and again. Here is an 
instance which once came under my eye. While 
sauntering along the border of the woods one day in 
September, I noticed several nuthatches and black- 
capped titmice busily gathering seeds from a clump 
of sunflower stalks, and flying with them to the trees 
near by. I found a seat and watched them for a 
long while. A nuthatch would dart over to a sun- 
flower stalk, cry. Yak I yak I in his famihar way, as if 
talking affectionately to himself, deftly pick out a seed 
from its encasement, fly with it to the trunk of an 
oak-tree, and then thrust it into a crevice of the 
bark with his long slender beak. He would then 
hurry back for another seed, which he would treat 
in the same way. 

The behavior of one of these little toilers was 
especially interesting. By mistake he pushed a 
seed into a cranny which seemed to be too deep for 
his purpose, and so he proceeded in his vigorous 
way to pry and chisel it out. He seemed to say to 
himself: ^*That would be too hard to disr out on a 



32 IN BIRD LAND. 

cold winter day ; I think I 'd better get it out now/' 
When he had secured it, he put it into another 
crevice, which also proved too deep ; and so his 
dainty had to be recovered once more. The third 
attempt, however, proved a charm, for that time he 
found a little pocket just to his liking. To make 
very sure he did not eat the seed, I did not take my 
eye from him for a single moment. The fact is, 
during the entire time spent in watching the birds, I 
did not see them eat a single seed. The titmice flew 
farther into the woods with their winter ^^ goodies," 
where the foliage was so dense, while the birds were 
so quick in movement, that it was impossible to see 
just where they hid their store ; but they returned 
too soon for a new supply to allow time for- eating 
the seeds. 

One autumn I spent a week in a part of Ken- 
tucky where beechnuts were very plentiful, and saw 
the hairy and red- headed woodpeckers putting 
away their hoard of ^^ mast " for the winter, indus- 
trious husbandmen that they were. A farmer said 
that he had often seen the woodpeckers carrying 
these nuts to a hole in a tree and dropping them 
into it. He once found such a winter store that 
must have contained fully a quart of beechnuts. In 
my own neighborhood the hairy woodpecker often 
hides tidbits in gullies of the bark, after the man- 
ner of the nuthatch. The crested tit also stows 
corn and various kinds of seeds in some safe niche 
for a time of exigency. Several times in the winter, 
when the ground was covered with snow, I have 



BIRD CURIOS. i^^ 

surprised this bird eating a corn grain in the very 
depth of the woods, a considerable distance from 
the neighboring cornfields. 

One winter day a nuthatch picked three grains of 
corn in succession from the fissures of an oak, and 
greedily devoured them. On another occasion one 
of these nuthatches was seen diving into a hole on 
the under side of a limb. Presently he emerged 
with a nut of some kind in his bill, and flew away, 
remaining just about long enough to eat it, when he 
returned for another. This he repeated until his 
dinner was finished. 

No doubt, when cold and stormy weather comes, 
these birds have many a luscious mouthful because 
of their forehandedness, and no doubt they enjoy 
their well-kept stores as much as the farmer and his 
family reHsh their dish of mellow apples around the 
glowing hearth on a winter evening. It is no fancy 
flight, but a literal truth, that many a niche and 
cleft is made to do duty as larder for the feathered 
and furred tenants of the woods. 

With the birds that migrate, autumn is the season 
for gathering in large convocations, holding " windy 
congresses in trees," as Lowell aptly puts it. The 
aerial movements of some of these feathered armies 
are often worthy of observation. Memory lingers 
fondly about a day in autumn when two friends and 
myself were clambering up the side of a steep hill 
or ridge that bounded a green hollow on the south. 
We had gone half-way to the top when we turned 
to admire the panorama spread out picturesquely 

3 



34 I^ ^IRD LAND. 

before us. Our exclamations of i3leasure at the 
scene were soon interrupted by a shadow hurthng 
across the hollow, and on looking up, we saw a vast 
army of crow blackbirds sweeping overhead, moving 
about fifty abreast. How long the column was I 
cannot say, but it extended over the hollow from 
hilltop to hilltop and some distance beyond in both 
directions. The odd feature about the ebon army's 
evolutions was this : The vanguard had gone on far 
beyond the ravine, and was. pushing over the oppo- 
site ridge, when there was a peculiar sv/aying move- 
ment near the centre directly above the hollow ; 
then that part of the column dropped gracefully 
downward toward the trees below them ; at the 
same moment those in the van swung lightly around 
to the right and returned, while the rear part of 
the column advanced rapidly, and then all swept 
grandly down into the tops of the tall trees in the 
ravine. It w^as a splendid military pageant, and 
might well start several queries m the interrogative 
mind. Where was the commander-in-chief of that 
sable army? Was he near the centre of the 
column? If so, why should he station himself 
there instead of at the head? Again, how could 
the message to return be sent so speedily to the 
vanguard ? Do birds employ some occult method 
of telegraphy? But these are questions more easily 
asked than answered ; for no one, so far as I know, 
has yet given special attention to the military tactics 
of the armies in feathers. 

It may be a somewhat abrupt transition from a 



BIRD CURIOS, 35 

crowd to an individual, but the reader must bear 
in mind that a close logical unity cannot be pre- 
served in a chapter composed of bric-a-brac; and, 
besides, is not every crowd made up of individuals ? 
How great was my surprise, one summer day, to 
see a purple grackle stalking about in his regal 
manner on the flat rocks of a shallow woodland 
stream, and then suddenly wheel about, pull a crab 
out of the water, and fly ofl" with it to a log, where 
he beat it to pieces and devoured it ! I doubt if 
many persons are aware that this bird dines on 
crab. On the same day another grackle, striding 
pompously about in the shallow water, suddenly 
sprang up into the air, some six or eight feet, and 
caught an insect on the wing. This was a perform- 
ance on the part of a crow blackbird never before 
witnessed by me. 

One day in the woods my saucy little madcap, 
the crested titmouse, was tilting about on the twigs 
of a sapling like a trapeze performer in a circus. 
Sometimes he hung lightly to the under side of a 
spray, and pecked nits and other dainties from the 
lower surface of a leaf. While doing so, he hap- 
pened to catch sight of an insect buzzing by ; he 
flung himself at it like a feathered arrow ; but for 
some reason he missed his mark, and the insect, in 
its efforts to escape, let itself drop toward the 
ground. An interesting scuflie followed ; the tit- 
mouse whirled around and around, dashing this way 
and that like zigzag lightning, in hot pursuit, flutter- 
ing his wings very rapidly until he alighted on the 



36 IN BIRD LAND, 

ground on the dry leaves, where he at last succeeded 
in capturing his prize. He gulped it down with a 
sly wink, as much as to say : '* Was n't that a clever 
trick, sir? Beat it if you can ! " Then he picked 
up a seed and flew with it to a twig in a dogwood 
sapling, where he placed it under his claws, holding 
it firmly as he nibbled it with his stout httle beak. 
His meal finished, he suddenly pretended to be 
greatly alarmed at something, called loudly. Chick, 
chick-a-da ! chick-a- da-da ! and darted away like 
an Indian's arrow. 

On the same day a golden-crowned kinglet — my 
Lilliputian of the woods — surprised me by drop- 
ping from a twig above me to the ground, right at 
my feet, passing within two or three inches of my 
face. Quick as a flash he leaped to a sapling before 
me, and I saw that he held a worm in his tiny bill. 
Of course, that was the prize for which he had 
dashed in such a headlong way to the ground. 

Few birds have charmed me more than the jolly 
red-headed woodpecker, and many a quaint antic 
has he performed with all the nonchalance of a sage 
or a stoic. He has a queer way of taking his meals. 
The first time it came to my notice I was walking 
home, on a hot summer day, along a railway, when 
a red-head bounded across the track before me, 
holding a ripe, blood-red cherry in his beak. He 
made a handsome picture with his pure white and 
velvety black coat and vest, his crimson cap and 
collar, and his — here my tropes fail, and I am 
forced to become literal — long, black beak, tipped 



BIRD CURIOS, 37 

with the scarlet berry. Swinging gracefully across 
the railway, he presently alighted on a stake of the 
meadow fence, where he seemed to place the cherry 
in a sort of crevice, and then sip from it in a 
somewhat dainty, half-caressing way, as if it were 
rarely billsome. My curiosity being excited, I eyed 
him awhile, and then, determined to reconnoitre, 
climbed the wire fence over into the meadow, and 
drove him away from his menu. There, in a small 
pocket of the fence-stake, apparently hollowed out, 
at least partially, by the bird himself, lay the cherry, 
its rind punctured in several places, where the 
diner-out had thrust in his bill to sip the juicy pulp 
underneath, — a sort of woodpecker's table d'hote. 
The crevice had a rank odor of cherries dried in 
the sun, — a proof that it had been used for a 
dining-table for some time. The legs and wings 
of several kinds of insects were also strewn about. 
Since that day I have found many of these pockets 
in fence-stakes, posts, dead tree-boles, and old 
stumps, where woodpeckers have placed their 
dainties to be eaten at their convenience. 

You have doubtless seen these red-heads catching 
insects on the wing. This they do with as much 
agility as the wood-pewee, sometimes performing 
evolutions that are little short of marvellous. From 
my study window I once watched one of these 
aeronauts as he sprang from the top of a tall oak- 
tree in the grove near by, and mounted up, up, up 
in graceful terraces of flight, until he had climbed 
at least twice the height of the tree, when he sud- 



3S IN BIRD LAND. 

denly stopped, poised a moment airily, wheeled 
about, and plunged downward headlong with a 
swiftness that made my head swim, closing the de- 
scent with a series of bounds, as if he were going 
down an aerial stairway. Whether he performed 
this feat in pursuit of an insect, or to display his 
skill, or only to give vent to his exuberance of 
feeling, I am unable to say. 

The red-head has an odd way of taking a bath 
during a Hght shower, which he does by clinging 
lengthwise to an upright or oblique branch, fluffing 
up his plumes as much as possible, and then flapping 
his wings slowly back and forth, thus allowing the 
refreshing drops thoroughly to percolate and rinse 
his handsome feathers. And, by the way, the subject 
of bird baths is one of no small degree of interest 
to the ogler of the feathered creation. It has been 
my good fortune to see a brilliant company of 
warblers of various species — lyrics in color, one 
might call them — performing their ablutions at a 
small pond in the woods. How their iridescent 
hues flashed and danced in the sunshine, as they 
dipped their dainty bosoms into the water, twinkled 
their wings, and fluttered their tails, sending the 
spray like pearl-mist into the air ! One sylvan pic- 
ture like that is worth many a mile's tramping. 

I once saw several myrtle warblers taking a dew- 
bath. Do you wonder how they did it? They 
leaped from a twig in the trees upon the dew-covered 
leaves, — it was early morning, — and fluttered about 
until their plumes were thoroughly drenched, then 



BIRD CURIOS. 39 

flitted to a perch to dry their bedraggled feathers 
and carefully arrange their dainty toilets.^ 

Besides, it has been my chance to witness my 
little confidant, Bewick's wren, taking a dust-bath, 
which he did in this manner : he would squat flat 
on" his belly on the ground in the lane, completely 
hiding his feet, and then glide about rapidly and 
smoothly over the little undulations, stirring the dust 
in volatile cloudlets. Never have I seen any per- 
formance, even in the bird realm so varied and 
versatile, more absolutely charming; so charming, 
indeed, that I believe my brief description of it 
will fittingly bring this rambling chapter on ^^ Bird 
Curios " to a close. 

1 Long after this statement had appeared in print, Mr. 
Bradford Torrey described, in the " Atlantic Monthly," a 
similar performance which he witnessed in Florida; and, 
rather oddly, myrtle warblers were also the actors in this 
instance. 



40 



IN BIRD LAND. 



III. 



WINTER FROLICS. 



HAD Mr. Lowell never written anything but 
"A Good Word for Winter/' he would still 
have deserved a place in the front rank of American 
writers. What a genuine appreciation of Nature, 
even in her sterner and more unfriendly moods, 
breathes in every line of his manfully written mono- 
graph ! Blessed be the man whose love for Nature 
is so leal and deeply rooted that he can say, '^ Even 
though she slay me, yet will I trust in her ! " When 
the storm howls dismally, and the icy gusts strike 
you rudely in the face ; when the cold rain or sleet 
pelts you spitefully; when, in short. Nature seems 
to frown and scold and bluster, — the loyal lover 
of her feels no waning of affection, but knows that 
beneath all her bluster and apparent harshness she 
carries a tender, maternal heart in her bosom that 
responds to his wooing. No, Thomson is in error 
when he says that winter is the *^ inverted year." 
Winter, as well as summer, is the year right end up, 
standing squarely on its feet ; or, if it does some- 
times turn a somersault, it quickly wheels about 
again into an upright position. Nor is Cotton's 
dictum correct that winter is " our mortal enemy.'* 



WINTER FROLICS, 41 

It has been much misunderstood, and therefore 
much abused, for there are persons who will ever 
and anon malign that which is above their com- 
prehension. 

It is just possible that the weather may sometimes 
become too cold in the winter for open-air exercise ; 
but the winter of 1 890-1 891, with its occasional 
snow-storms, its alternating days of rain and clear 
sunshine, was an almost ideal one for the rambler. 
There were times when the woods were clad in 
robes more beautiful than the green of spring or 
the brown of autumn ; when I was compelled to 
exclaim with a Scottish poet, — - 

*' Now is the time 
To visit Nature in her grand attire.*' 

I mean those days when every twig and branch 
was " ridged inch-deep with pearl," making the 
woodland a perfect network of marble shafts and 
columns. 

As to the feathered tenants of the woods, they 
were almost as light-hearted and gay as in the 
season of sunshine and flowers, save that they were 
not so prolific of song. Quite a number of interest- 
ing species were the constant companions of my 
winter loiterings, and several of them occasionally 
regaled me with snatches of melody. Among our 
winter songsters is the hardy Carolina wren. On 
December and January days when the weather was 
quite cold, his vigorous bugle echoed through the 
woods, Chil-le-lu^ chil-k-lu^ or, Che-zuish-year, che- 



42 



IN BIRD LAND. 



wish-year, giving one the feeling that at least one 
brave little heart was not discouraged on account 
of the dismal moaning of the wintry storm. He 
is every inch a hero, and I wonder Emerson did 
not celebrate his praise as well as that of the black- 
capped chickadee, in verse. The wren is somewhat 
more of a recluse than most of my winter intimates. 
He has not been quite as sociable as I should have 
liked. Whether it was modesty or selfishness that 
made him a sort of eremite could not be deter- 
mined. Most of his contemporaries, such as the 
chickadees, kinglets, nuthatches, and woodpeckers, 
prefer to go in straggling flocks ; so that, as soon 
as I see one bird or hear his call, I feel sure that he 
is simply the sentinel of a bevy of feathered tilters 
and coasters at my elbow. No, they do not believe 
in monasteries or nunneries; they do not believe 
that it is good for a bird to be alone, whatever may 
be said of man or woman. Listen to that kinglet, 
the malapert, hanging head- downward on a spray 
and making his disclaimer : *^ No, sir, we birds 
are sociable beings, as men are, and like to hold 
commerce with one another. What good would it 
do to sing so sweetly or tilt so gracefully were 
there no auditors or spectators to admire our per- 
formances?" And all his plumed comrades cry, 
" Aye ! aye ! " by way of emphatic endorsement. 

The division of these tenants of the woods into 
communities or colonies is a matter of unique 
interest to the ornithologist. For instance, there 
seemed to be at least two of these groups, one 



WINTER FROLICS, 43 

dwelling chiefly in the eastern part of the woodland 
not far from a farm-house, and the other occupying 
the western part. Sometimes, too, another com- 
munity was found in the partly cleared section at 
the northern extremity of one arm of the timber 
belt. These several groups reminded one of the 
nomadic tribes of Oriental countries, who rove 
from one locality to another within certain loosely 
defined boundaries. True, it is merely a matter 
of speculation ; but I have often wondered if feuds 
and jealousies ever arise among these various 
feathered tribes, as is so conspicuously the case in 
the human world. I doubt it very much, for my 
woodland birds dwell together in comparative 
harmony, and are not half so quarrelsome and 
envious as many communities of men and women. 
Bird nature is evidently not so depraved as human 
nature. Perhaps, as the birds had no direct hand 
in the first transgression, the curse did not fall so 
blightingly upon them. 

My western bird colony were somewhat erratic 
in their movements. During December and the 
first week in January I found them almost invari- 
ably in a secluded part of the woods about half-way 
between the northern and southern extremities ; 
but when, about the middle or possibly the twen- 
tieth of January, I visited the haunt, not a bird of 
any description could be found. Had all of them 
gone to other climes ? I felt a pang as the thought 
came. But there was no occasion for solicitude. 
Near the southern terminus of the woods, although 



44 /^ BIRD LAND, 

Still in a dense portion of them, the colony had 
taken up a temporary abode. Here they remained 
for over a week, and then, on the twenty-ninth of the 
month, which was a rainy day, they shifted back to 
their old tryst, while scarcely a bird was to be found 
in the locality they had just left. Thus by caprice, 
or on account of the exigencies of food, they oscil- 
lated from place to place. 

There were some birds here all winter that were 
not found during the previous winter — that of 
1 889-1 890. The golden-crowned kinglet was one. 
Every day, rain or shine, warm or cold, he flitted 
about so cheerfully and with so innocent an air 
that I often spoke to him as if he were a real 
person; and he appreciated my words of praise, 
too,, without doubt, for he would come scurrying 
near, disporting his head so that I could catch the 
gleam of his amber coronal, with its golden patch 
for a centre-piece. Then there was that quaint 
little genius, the brown creeper, hugging the trunks 
of the trees and saplings, and tracing the gullies of 
the bark as he sought for such food as he relished. 
See him turn his cunning head from side to side to 
peer under a loose scale ! 

Among my most pleasant winter companions w^re 
the black-capped chickadees or tomtits. Not for 
anything would I cast a reflection upon these en- 
gaging birds, but candor compels me to say that 
they seem to be somewhat fickle ; that is, I cannot 
always tell where to find them, or if they will let 
themselves be found at all. Early in the spring of 



WINTER FROLICS. 



45 



last year they made their appearance in these woods, 
remaining a week or more, and then were not seen 
until about the middle of August. Again they dis- 
appeared, returning in October, and then hied away 
once more and did not come back until January. 
Besides, at one time they associated with the eastern 
colony of birds and at another with the western. 
Like some '^ featherless bipeds, " — Lowell's expres- 
sion, — they seemed to be of a roving disposition. 
A winter ago they occasionally stirred the elves and 
brownies of the woodland into transports by their 
sweet, sad minor whistle, but this winter they were 
provokingly chary of their musical performances. 

For ever-presentness, however, both summer and 
winter, the crested titmice and white-breasted nut- 
hatches bear off the palm. Many droll tricks they 
perform. One day in January a titmouse scurried 
from the ground into a sapling; he held a large 
grain of corn between his mandibles, and, after 
flitting about a few moments, hopped to a dead 
branch that lay across the twigs, and deftly pushed 
the grain into the end of the bough. I stepped 
closer, when he tried to secure the hidden morsel ; 
but my presence frightened him away, and I cHmbed 
the sapling, drew the broken branch toward me, 
and peered into the splintered end ; yes, there was 
the grain of corn wedged firmly into a crevice. The 
provident little fellow ! He had secreted the morsel 
for a stormy day when it would be impossible to 
procure food on the ground. If Solomon had 
watched these thrifty, industrious birds, as they 



46 IN BIRD LAND. 

pursue their untiring quest for food, he doubtless 
would have written in his Proverbs : '' Go to the 
titmouse, thou sluggard ; consider his ways, and be 
wise." 

Associated with the titmice, kinglets, and nut- 
hatches were the downy woodpeckers, w^hich belong 
to the artisan family of the bird community, being 
hammerers, drillers, and chisellers all combined. 
They pursue their chosen calling most sedulously. 
" What 's the use of having a vocation if you don't 
follow it?" you may almost hear them say as they 
cant their heads to one side and peep under the 
bark for a tidbit, or hammer vigorously at a crevice 
in which a worm is embedded. The hairy wood- 
peckers, which are somewhat larger, are more erratic 
in their movements, none having been seen from 
the autumn until the latter part of January. At 
this date I heard their loud, nervous Chi-i-i-r-r, as 
they dashed from tree to tree apparently in great 
excitement. 

I cannot forbear contrasting this winter with the 
previous one. In the winter of 1889-1890 the song- 
sparrows never left us at all, but sang on almost 
every pleasant day when I went to the woods or 
marsh ; but this winter, which was somewhat colder, 
they went to other climes, and left the fringes of the 
pools and the thickets in the swamp tenantless, 
songless, and desolate. In 1 889-1 890 the cardinal 
grossbeaks whistled every month, making the woods 
ring even in January ; this winter not a single note 
was heard from their resonant throats. I had just 



WINTER FROLICS. 47 

begun to fear that the pair which had greeted 
me so frequently the previous winter had been 
slaughtered by some caterer to the shameful fashions 
of the day, when, on the twenty-eighth of January, 
I was gladdened by the sight of them in company 
with several of their relatives or acquaintances and 
a bevy of tree-sparrows. Where had the grossbeaks 
been since November? And if they had gone south, 
why did they return from their visit so early in the 
season? Or perhaps a still more pertinent inquiry 
would be, Why had they gone away at all? It is 
difficult, however, to explain grossbeak caprice or 
ratiocination. 

What do the birds do when it rains? No doubt, 
when the rain pours in torrents, they find plenty 
of coverts in the thick bushes or in the cavities 
of trees ; but when the rain falls gently, and I make 
my way to their haunts, as I often do, they flit 
about as industriously as ever in their quest for 
food, only stopping now and then to shake the 
pearly drops from their water-proof cloaks. In 
such humid weather the wood-choppers in the forest 
— the human ones — stop their work and seek 
shelter. Not so these feathered workers, who gayly 
continue their playful toil, and exclaim exultingly, 
"Isn't this a jolly rain?'* 

In another chapter mention has been made of 
the provident habits of certain birds, especially the 
titmice and nuthatches, in laying by a winter store. 
As if to confirm what has been said, one winter day 
a nuthatch went scudding up and down the trunk of 



48 



IN BIRD LAND. 



a large oak-tree at the border of the woods. Pres- 
ently he cried, Yank I yank ! as if to announce a 
discovery. Then he pecked and pried with all his 
might, until at length he drew a grain of corn out 
of a crevice of the bark, placed it in a shallow pocket 
on the other side of the tree, and began to pick it 
to pieces, swallowing the fragments as he broke them 
off. When this grain had been disposed of, he 
found another, and then another, until his hunger 
seemed to be appeased, when he darted off into 
the woods. 

Other pedestrians and observers may differ from 
me both in temperament and habits, but to my 
mind nothing could be more delightful than a 
ramble in a snow-storm. Let the wind blow a gale 
from the west, driving the cold pellets blindingly 
into your face, and trying to rob you of your over- 
coat and cap ; yet, if you have the spirit of the 
genuine rambler, your blood will tingle with delight, 
as well as with a sense of masterly overcoming, as 
you plod along ; while you feel that every fierce gust 
that strikes you is only one of Nature's love-taps, — 
a little rough, it is true, but for that very reason all 
the more expressive of affection. Stalking forth 
into the teeth of a winter storm develops the hardy 
traits of character, and puts the ingredients from 
which heroes are made into the pulsing veins. 
Many a time, as I have pushed my way triumphantly 
through the pelting wind, I have answered with a 
shout of joy Emerson's vigorous challenge, — 



WINTER FROLICS. 49 

" Come see the north wind's masonry. 
Out of an unseen quarry, evermore 
Furnished with tile, the fierce artificer 
Carves his white bastions with projected roof 
Round every windward stake, or tree, or door." 

My winter saunterings have never been solitary, 
although often taken in haunts "far from human 
neighborhood.' ' The birds have afforded me all 
the companionship I have really craved. One is 
never lonely when one can see the flutter of a wing 
or hear the calls of the blithe commoners of the 
wildwood. When your soul is fretted by the daily 
round of strifes and jealousies in the human world, 
you can hie to the woods, and learn a lesson of con- 
ciliation from the example of the loving fellowship 
that exists in the bird community. I have often 
been shamed by this constant display of amity 
among many feathered folk, when I thought of the 
childish bickerings of men in church and state. 

But moralizing aside, I must describe the behavior 
of my little winter friends, the tree-sparrows. They 
are the hardiest birds that spend the winter in my 
neighborhood, disdaining to seek shelter in the 
thick woods during the most violent snow-storm. 
Even the snowbirds, whose very name is a synonym 
for toughness, are glad to seek a covert in some 
secluded forest nook ; but the tree-sparrows choose 
the clearing at the border of the woodland, where 
the wind howls loudest and blows the snow in wild 
eddies. Here they revel in the storm, flitting from 
twig to twig, hopping on the snow-covered ground 

4 



so 



IN BIRD LAND. 



as if it were a carpet of down, and picking seeds 
from grass-stems and weed-stalks. All the while 
they keep up a cheerful chirping, as if to express 
their appreciation of the pleasant winter weather. 

Strangest of all is their wading about in the snow. 
It makes me shiver to see their little bare feet sink- 
ing into the icy crystals, and I feel disposed to offer 
them my warm rubber boots ; only I know they 
would decline the proposal with scorn. ^* I am no 
tenderfoot ! " one of them seems to say, with cunning 
literalness. Their dainty tracks in the snow are 
suggestive, and give to the thoughtful observer more 
than one clew to bird cerebration. Let us follow 
one of these winding pathways. Here a bird 
alighted, his feet sinking deep into the cold down ; 
then he hopped along to this tuft of grass, where he 
picked a few mouthfuls of seeds, standing up to his 
body in the snow ; then an impulse seized him to 
seek another feeding-place ; so he went plunging 
through the drifts, leaving, at regular intervals, the 
prints of his two tiny feet side by side, while his 
toes traced a slender connecting line on the white 
surface between the deeper indentations. But here 
is another path. What impulse seized this bird to 
turn back like a rabbit on his track? For it is 
evident that this is sometimes done. Then here 
are only two or three footprints, showing that the 
bird alighted suddenly, and as suddenly yielded to 
an impulse to fly up again. What thought struck 
him just at that moment that made him so quickly 
change his mind? 






WINTER FROLICS. 



SI 



At one point I traced a path which bore evidence 
of having been used a number of times for a long 
distance, as it wound here and there in an ex- 
tremely sinuous course among the bushes and briers. 
Probably it was a sparrow-trail, if not a thoroughfare, 
and had been used by many birds. In more than 
one place were small hollows in the snow, just large 
enough for a bird's body to wallow in. Usually 
they were at the terminus of one of these thorough- 
fares. Might the birds have tarried there to take a 
snow-bath? I have seen birds taking pool-baths, 
shower-baths, dew-baths, and dust-baths. Who will 
say they never take a snow-bath? 

Next to the tree-sparrows, the juncos delight to 
hold carnival in the snow ; but their behavior in this 
element is somewhat different : they are not so fond 
of hopping about in it, and do not plait such a net- 
work of tracks among the bushes. They will fly 
from a perch directly to the ground near a weed- 
stalk or other cluster of dainties, and stand quietly 
in the snow up to their Httle bodies while they take 
their luncheon. Sometimes their white breasts rest 
on the surface of the snow, or in a slight depression 
of it, when they look as if they were sitting in a nest 
of crystals. 

The eighth of January was a cold day ; in a little 
opening in the midst of the woods was a covey of 
snowbirds, and, incredible as it may seem, several 
of them stood in the selfsame tracks in the snow, so 
long that my own feet actually got frost-bitten while 
I watched them, although I wore three pairs of 



52 



IN BIRD LAND. 



socks — this is an honest confession — and a pair 
of warm rubber boots. More than that, they thrust 
their beaks into the snow and ate of it quite greedily. 
What wonderful reserves of caloric must be wrapped 
up in their small bodies to enable them to keep 
themselves comfortable in winter with never a 
mouthful of warm victuals or drink ! That the birds 
should thrive and be happy in the spring and 
summer is no matter of surprise ; but it remains for 
the lover of out-door life in the winter to prove that 
many of them are just as cheerful and content when 
the mercury has taken a jaunt to some point far 
below zero. 

The student of Nature cannot always be in the 
same mood. Indeed, Nature herself is, at. times, as 
whimsical, apparently, as the human heart. There 
are times when she seems quite stolid, keeping her 
precious secrets all to herself, as if her lips had 
been hermetically sealed. With all your coaxing and 
hoaxing and flattery, you cannot win from her a re- 
sponse. Emerson, in one of his poems, speaks about 
the forms of Nature dulling the edge of the mind 
with their monotony ; and this sometimes seems to 
be the case. Yet I must protest at once that it is 
not generally true. There are days when Nature 
fairly bubbles over with good cheer, and grows talk- 
ative and even confidential, responding to every 
touch of the rambler as a well-strung harp responds 
to the touch of a skilful player. It is difficult to 
account for her changeable moods, but obviously 
they are not always to be traced only to the mind 
of the observer. 



WINTER FROLICS. 53 

During the winter of 1 891-1892 many a tramp 
was taken to the homes of the birds; and let me 
whisper that there were days when even they seemed 
to be dull and commonplace. That is a frank con- 
cession for a bird-lover to make, but it is the truth. 
Sometimes these feathered actors have behaved in 
the most ordinary way, failing to perform a single 
trick that I had not seen a score of times before, and 
I have actually gone home without making a single 
entry in my note-book. But it has not always been 
so. There, for example, was the twenty-second of 
January ; what an eventful day it was ! The morn- 
ing of the twenty-first had been very cold, the mer- 
cury having sunk, probably in a fit of despair, to 
fourteen degrees below zero. During the day, how- 
ever, the weather grew considerably warmer ; and 
when the twenty-second came, bright and clear, 
though still cold, one could take a jaunt with some 
comfort. . The sun shone from a cloudless sky, 
and having put on my warm rubber boots, I waded 
out through the deep snow to the woods. The se- 
vere weather had not discouraged the jolly juncos 
and tree-sparrows, or driven them to a warmer 
climate. They delight in cold weather ; it seems to 
make them all the merrier. They were flitting about 
in the bushes and trees, chirping gayly, or, like my- 
self, were wading in the snow, although they had no 
woollen stockings for their little feet, much less warm 
rubber boots. What hardy creatures they are ! For 
long distances I could trace their dainty tracks in 
the snow, winding in and out among the bushes and 



54 IN BIRD LAND, 

weeds, and making many a graceful curve, loop, angle, 
and labyrinth. By following these little paths, as has 
been said before, you may trace the thoughts of a 
bird, — that is, you may for the time become a bird 
mind-reader, interpreting every impulse that seized 
the throbbing little brain and breast. 

While watching these birds in the woods, I ob- 
served a new freak of bird deportment. The juncos 
would fly up into the dogwood-trees, pick off a berry, 
nibble it greedily a moment with their little white 
mandibles, and then fling it to the ground. My eye 
was especially fixed on one little epicure. Presently 
he found a berry that was juicy and quite to his 
taste, and what did he do but seize it in his beak 
and dash down into the snow, where he stood leg- 
deep in the icy crystals until he had eaten his blood- 
red tidbit ! He was in no hurry, but slowly picked 
the berry to pieces, flinging it again and again into 
the snow, devouring the soft red pulp and throw- 
ing the rind and seed away. He must have stood 
for fully ^Y^ minutes in the same tracks ; at all events, 
it seemed a long while to me, standing stock-still in 
the snow, watching him eat his cold luncheon, while 
my feet were becoming chilled. I should have pitied 
his little feet had he not seemed so utterly indifferent 
to the cold. Afterward I saw a number of juncos, 
as well as tree- sparrows, taking their dinner in a simi- 
lar way, — that is, on the snow, which seemed to serve 
them for a table-cloth. Having eaten the pulp of 
the berries, they left the pits and scarlet rinds lying 
on top of the snow. Crumbs they were, scattered 



^^HHiP 



WINTER FROLICS, 55 

about by these precious cRildren of the woods ! In 
this respect the snowbirds and tree-sparrows differ 
from the crested titmice, which reject the pulp of 
the dogwood berries entirely, but bore out the ker- 
nel of the pit and eat it with a rehsh. And as to 
the gluttonous robins, bluebirds, woodpeckers, and 
waxwings, they swallow these berries whole. Every 
citizen of Birdville to his own taste, so I say. 

In the corn-field adjoining the woods I witnessed 
another little scene that filled me with delight. At 
some distance I perceived a snowbird eating seeds 
from the raceme of a tall weed, which bent over in a 
graceful arc beneath its dainty burden. Apparently 
he was enjoying his repast all to himself. I climbed 
the fence, and cautiously went nearer to get a better 
view of the httle diner-out. What kind of discovery 
do you suppose I made ? I could scarcely believe 
my eyes. There, beneath the weed, hopping about 
on the snow, were a tree-sparrow and a junco, pick- 
ing up the seeds that their little companion above 
was shaking down. It was such a pretty little 
comedy that I laughed aloud for pure delight. It 
seemed for all the world like a boy in an apple-tree 
shaking down the mellow fruit for his playmates, 
who were gathering it from the ground as it fell. It 
was a pity to disturb the birds at their festivities, 
and I felt like a bully for doing so ; but in the inter- 
est of science, you see, I had to drive them away to 
see what kind of table they had spread. Beneath 
the weed the snow was etched with dainty bird- 
tracks, and thickly strewn with black seeds from the 
raceme of the weed-stalk. 



56 IN BIRD LAND. 

Farther on in the woods, another cunning little 
junco proved himself no lay figure. It seemed, in 
fact, to be a junco day. When I first espied him, he 
was standing in the snow beneath a slender weed- 
stem eating seeds from his white table-cloth. But the 
curious feature about his behavior was that, whenever 
his supply of seeds on the snow had been picked 
up, he would dart up to the weed-stem (which was 
too slender to afford him a comfortable perch), give 
it a vigorous shake, which would bring down a 
quantity of seeds, and then he would flit below and 
resume his meal. This he did several times. I 
should not have believed a junco gifted with so much 
sense had not my own eyes witnessed this cunning 
performance. Had some other observer told the 
story, I should have laughed at it a little slyly and 
more than half unbelievingly ; but, of course, one 
cannot gainsay the evidence of one's own eyesight. 

Nothing in all my winter rambles has surprised 
me more than the evident delight some species of 
birds take in the snow. It is a sort of luxury to 
them, wading-ground and feasting-ground all in one. 
How they keep their little bare feet from becoming 
chilblained is a mystery. The evening of the twen- 
tieth of January was bitterly cold, the wind blowing 
in fierce, howling gusts from the northwest. Yet 
when, at about five o'clock, I stalked out to the 
pond in the rear of my house, the tree-sparrows and 
song- sparrows were fairly revelling, not to say wal- 
lowing, in the snow among the weeds. The wind 
was so biting that I soon hurried back to the house, 
and left them to their midwinter carousal. 



WINTER FROLICS. 



57 



Quite a respectable colony of flickers found a 
home during the winter in my favorite woodland. 
Unlike the other birds mentioned, they do not wade 
about in the snow. No; to their minds, a bare 
tree-wall is the desideratum for a tramping-ground ; 
and if they need more exercise than promenading 
affords them, they can take to wing and go bounding 
from one part of the woods to another. A flicker is 
a staid bird when he does n't happen to be in a play- 
ful mood. You would have laughed at one in De- 
cember which was clinging to a branch high up in a 
tree with his head right in front of a woodpecker 
hole, over which he seemed to be standing guard. 
There he clung, as if that hollow contained the most 
precious treasure, and would not desert his post, 
although I leaped about on the ground, shouted 
loudly, and even flung my cap in the air like a wild 
man, to frighten him away. How comical he looked 
in his role of sentinel ! He never smiled or even 
winked, but left such trifling to the human scatter- 
brain below, who was so ill-mannered as to laugh 
at a well-behaved woodpecker. Perhaps he had a 
winter store of food stowed away in that cavity, and 
thought he had to guard it well, now that a real 
brigand had come provvHng about the premises. 



58 



LW BIRD LAXD, 



IV. 



FEBRUARY OUTIXGS. 

IF I were not afraid of the ridicule of the cynic, 
I should begin this Februar}' chronicle with an 
exclamation of delight ; but in these days, when so 
many of the so-called cultured class have taken for 
their motto, jyH admirari, one must try to repress 
one's enthusiasm, or be scoffed at, or at least pat- 
ronized, as young and inexperienced. Yet it would 
be. out of the question for the genuine rambler to 
keep the valve constantly upon his buoyant feelings. 
If he did so, he would be wholly out of tune with 
the jubilant mood of bird and bloom and wave 
around him. 

Almost every day of February, 1891, was a gala- 
day for me, on account of the large number of birds 
in song at that time. The weather was not always 
pleasant, but the month came in blandly, bringing 
on its gentle winds many birds from their southern 
wdnter-quarters ; and as they had come, they made 
up their minds to stay. Tsly notes begin with the 
eleventh of the month, and my narrative will begin 
with that date. In the evening I strolled out to my 
favorite swamp. On my arrival all was quiet ; but 
soon the song-sparrows, seeing that a human auditor 



ant 



FEBRUARY OUTINGS, 59 

had come, broke into a~ jingling chorus. Early in 
the season as it was, they seemed to be almost in 
perfect voice, only a little of the hesitancy and 
twitter of their fall songs being distinguishable ; 
nor did they seem to care for the raw evening 
wind blowing across the meadows, or the gray 
clouds scurrying athwart the sky, but kept up their 
canticles until the dusk fell. 

Two days later, while sauntering through a wood- 
land, I had the greatest surprise of the winter. For 
several years I had been studying the tree-sparrows, 
hoping to hear them sing, but only two or three 
times had my anxious quest been rewarded with 
even a wisp of melody from their lyrical throats. 
On this day, however, I came upon a whole colony 
of them in full tune, giving a concert that would 
have thrilled the most prosaic soul with poetry and 
romance. It was the first time I had ever really 
seen these birds while singing; but now, so kind 
was fortune, I could watch the movement of their 
mandibles, the swelling of their throats, and the 
heaving of their bosoms while they trilled their 
roundelays. My notes, taken on the spot, run as 
follows : ^^ The song is somewhat crude and labored 
in technique ; but the tones are very sweet indeed, 
not soft and low, as one author says, but quite loud 
and clear, so that they might be heard at some dis- 
tance. The minstrelsy is more like that of the fox- 
sparrow than of any other sparrow, though the tones 
are finer and not so full and resonant. Quite often 
the song opens with one or two long syllables, and 



6o IN BIRD LAND. 

ends with a merry little trill having a delightfully 
human intonation. There is, indeed, something 
innocent and even childhke about the voices of 
these sparrows. Had they the song-sparrow's skill 
in execution, they would rival that triller's vocal 
performances. How many of them are taking 
part in the concert ! They seem to be holding a 
song carnival to-day, and there is real witchery in 
their music. Frequently their songs are superim- 
posed, as it were, upon the semi-musical chattering 
in which these birds so often indulge." 

But, strange to say, although the conditions were 
apparently in every respect favorable, I did not hear 
the song of a single tree-sparrow after that epochal 
day for more than a year. Evidently these birds 
are- erratic songsters, at least in this latitude. On 
the same day the meadow-larks flung their flute-like 
songs athwart the fields, and the bold bugle of the 
Carolina wren echoed through the woods. 

February 14. ^^ In the swamp the song-sparrows 
are holding an opera festival," my notes run. ^' One 
of them trills softly in a clump of wild-rose bushes, 
as if asking permission to sing ; and then, his request 
being gladly granted, he leaps up boldly to a twig 
of a sapling, and breaks into a torrent of melody. 
i\nother, in precisely the same tune, answers him 
farther down the stream, the two executing a sort 
of fugue. A third leaps about on the dry grass 
that fringes a ditch, twitters merrily for a while, 
then flies to a small oak-tree near by, and — well, 
such a loud, rollicking, tempestuous song I have 



FEBRUARY OUTINGS. 6 1 

never before heard from a song-sparrow's throat. 
Some of his tones are full and exultant, while others 
in the same run are low and tender, hke the strains 
of a love-lorn harp. The tones produced by exha- 
lation can be distinguished from those produced 
by inhalation. Sometimes his voice sounds a little 
hoarse, as if he had strained one of the strings of 
his lyre, but I find, on focusing my ear upon them, 
that these are some of his most melodious notes. 
Presently, in a fit of ecstasy, he hurls forth such a 
torrent of song, in allegro furioso^ that one almost 
fancies the naiads and water-witches of the marsh 
are crying out for admiration. 

" Here is something worthy of note — when the 
song-sparrow begins a trill, he usually sings it over a 
number of times, and then, as if wearied with one 
tune, turns to another ; and yet with all his varia- 
tions — and I know not how many he is capable of 
singing — there is always something distinctive about 
his minstrelsy that differentiates it from that of all 
other birds." 

February 17. ^^ Again in the swamp. It seems 
to me I have never before heard the song- sparrows 
sing so gleefully. Every concert goes ahead of its 
predecessor. Here is a sparrow hopping about on 
the green grass among the bushes like a brown 
mouse ; now he chirps sharply as if to attract my 
attention, and then bursts into a melody that almost 
makes me turn a somersault for very joy ; and now, 
having sung his intermittent trills for a few minutes, 
he begins to warble a sweet, continuous lay, with an 
andante movement, as if he could not stop. 



62 



IN BIRD LAND. 



'' A little farther on^ another songster, with a 
voice of excellent timbre, is descanting on a small 
oak sapling. Note, he runs over several trills, rising 
higher at every effort, until at last he strikes a note 
far up in the scale, holds it firmly a moment, and 
then drops to a lower note. Then he repeats the 
process, the summit of his ambition being attained 
whenever he reaches that high note, which is 
bewitchingly sweet. How clear and true his voice 
rings ! 

*^ Sometimes a silence falls upon the marsh ; not 
a note is to be heard for a minute or two; and 
then, as if by a preconcerted signal, a dozen spar- 
rows throw the air into musical tumult, their com- 
bined rush of notes seeming almost like a salvo. 
Often, too, when I approach the marsh, no music is 
heard, but no sooner have I climbed the fence into 
the enclosure than the choral begins; so that I 
believe I am justified in saying that the 'song-spar- 
row appreciates a human auditor. This is not said 
by way of disparagement, — by no means ; for 
almost all musicians, whether human or avian, sing 
to be heard." 

On the same day I saw a song- sparrow whose 
central tail-feather was pure white from quill to tip, 
and the bird remained in the marsh until the twenty- 
fourth of the month, his odd adornment visible from 
afar. I was also surprised to find two male che- 
winks in the bushes. A cardinal grossbeak was also 
seen, and a robin's song and the loud call of a 
flicker were heard. 



FEBRUARY OUTINGS. 6^ 

My next outing occurred on the nineteenth, 
when the weather had turned colder, and snow was 
falhng, mingled with sleet; yet several song- 
sparrows trilled softly in the marsh. On the twenty- 
third crow blackbirds were seen, and on the twenty- 
fourth a turtle-dove was cooing meditatively, and 
the song-sparrows were holding another opera festi- 
val. The last days of February became cold again, 
and March brought several severe storms ; but I think 
none of the hardy, adventurous birds named, retreated 
to a warmer clime, even if they did regret having left 
their winter quarters a little prematurely. 



64 



IN BIRD LAND. 



V. 



ARRIVAL OF THE BIRDS. 

HAVE any of my readers kept a record of the 
arrival of the birds during the spring ? The 
northward procession of the battahons in feathers is 
an interesting study. Why do some birds begin 
their pilgrimage from the south so much earlier than 
others? What is there in their physical and mental 
make-up that gives them the northward impulse even 
before fair weather has come? Do they become 
homesick for their summer haunts sooner than their 
fellows? These are questions that are much more 
easily asked than answered. The size of the bird 
furnishes no clew to the solution, for some small 
birds are better able to resist the cold than many 
larger ones. There is the httle black-capped tit- 
mouse — a mere mite of a bird — which generally 
remains in my neighborhood all winter, cheerfully 
braving the stormiest weather ; while the brown 
thrasher, fully five times as large, is carefully warm- 
ing his shins in the sunny south, and will not ven- 
ture north until the spring has come to stay. Here, 
too, is Bewick's wren on the first day of April, — 
with no thought of making an April fool of any 
one, — while the Baltimore orioles, rose-breasted 



m^ 



ARRIVAL OP THE BIRDS, 65 

grossbeaks, and scarlet tanagers, all larger than he, 
are tarrymg in Georgia and Alabama. There is 
nothing in the size or color or form of the birds that 
makes this difference ] it is doubtless in the blood. 

I have kept a careful memorandum of the arrival 
of these feathered voyagers (this was during the 
spring of 1892), and know almost to a certainty 
the day, and sometimes the hour, when they cast 
anchor in this port. The winter had been unusually 
severe, and yet the migration began as early as the 
twenty-second of February, when the first meadow- 
larks put in appearance, and sent their wavering 
shafts of song across the frost-bound fields. They 
had left only on the last day of December, but had 
apparently remained away as long as they could. 
On the same day the killdeer plovers also arrived, 
making their presence known by their wailing cry. 
On the twenty-third I heard the Q-q-o-o-ka-l-e-e-e of 
the red-winged blackbirds, and on the morning of 
the twenty-fourth the first robins dropped from the 
sky after a "flying trip" in the night from some 
more southern stopping-place ; but the weather 
was too cold for them to sing. Yet the song-spar- 
rows and meadow-larks defied the cold with their 
cheerful melody. While the robin is a very gay 
and lavish songster, he wants favorable weather for 
his vocal rehearsals, and a " cold snap " will easily 
discourage him. He is evidently somewhat of a fair- 
weather minstrel. It was on February twenty- 
eighth, a pleasant day, that I caught the first strain 
of robin melody. 

5 



66 IN BIRD LAND, 

The towhee buntings dropped anchor on the 
seventh of March, filling the woods with their fine, 
explosive trills. It was a pleasant day, a sort of 
oasis in the midst of the stormy weather, and it did 
not seem inapt to speculate a little as to the thoughts 
of these birds on their arrival at their old summer 
haunts, after an absence of four or five months. 
Was the old brush-heap, where they had built their 
nest the previous spring, still there? Had the 
winter storms spared the twig on the sapling where 
Cock Bunting had sung erstwhile his sv/eetest trills 
to his dusky mate ? ^* What if the woodman has 
cleared away our pleasant corner of the woods?" 
whispers Mrs. Towhee to her lord as they approach 
the sequestered spot. How their hearts must bound 
with joy when they find sapling and brush-heap and 
winding woodway all as they had left them in the 
autumn ! No wonder they are so tuneful ! Even 
the snow-storms that moan and howl through the 
woods a few days later cannot wholly repress their 
exuberant feelings. 

On the same date a whole colony of young song, 
sparrows stopped at this station on their journey 
northward, although you must remember that quite 
a number of their elders remained here through the 
winter. What a twittering these year- old sparrows 
made in the bushes fringing the woods ! I actually 
laughed aloud at their crude, tuneless, quasi-musical 
efforts. They were not in good voice, and, besides, 
had not yet fully learned the tunes that are sung in 
sparrowdom, and could not control their vocal 



ARRIVAL OF THE BIRDS. 67 

chords. They made many sorry and amusing at- 
tempts to chant and trill, but their voices would 
break and catch in the most remarkable ways, now 
sliding up too high in the scale, now sliding down 
too low, and now veering too much to one side, so 
to speak. One tyro, I observed, sang the first part 
of a run very well, almost as well, in fact, as an adult 
musician could have sung it ; but when he tried to 
finish, his voice seemed to fly all to flinders. He 
made the attempt again and again, but to no pur- 
pose. It was a day for which I have cut a notch 
in the tally-stick of memory. Leaving the company 
of young vocalists at their rehearsals at the border 
of the woods, I made my way to a swamp not far 
off, where a pleasant surprise lay in ambush. Here 
were no longer found young song-sparrows, but 
adults, and you should have heard them sing. What 
a contrast between the crude songs of the young 
birds and the loud, clear, splendidly intoned and 
executed trills of these trained musicians ! 

But I must return to the subject of migration. 
The fifteenth of March was a raw, blustering day, 
as its predecessors had been ; but in the woods sev- 
eral fox-sparrows were singing, not their best, of 
course, but fairly well for such weather. They must 
have come during the night. But why had they 
come when the weather was so cold? Most birds 
wait until there is a bland air- current from the south 
on which they can ride triumphantly. Had this 
small band of fox-sparrows followed the example 
of a well-known American humorist, and gone to 



6S IN BIRD LAND. 

*^ roughing it "? Strange to say, I saw no more fox- 
sparrows until the twenty-eighth, when the weather 
had grown warm. That was also the day on which 
I saw the first winter wren scudding about in the 
brush-heaps and wood-piles and perking up his tail 
in the most approved bantam fashion. It may be 
a poor joke, but the thought came of its own accord, 
that if brevity is the soul of wit, this little wren 
must have a very witty tail; and it really is an 
amusing appendage, held up at an acute angle with 
the bird's sloping back. 

As I strolled along the edge of the woods on the 
same day, the fine rhythmic trill of the bush-spar- 
row reached my ear. He was celebrating his return 
to this sylvan resort, and his voice was in excellent 
trim ; the fact is, I never heard him acquit himself 
quite so well, not even in May. Miss Lucy Larcom, 
of tender and sacred memory, has happily charac- 
terized this triller's song in melodious verse : — 

" One syllable, clear and soft 
As a raindrop's silvery patter, 
Or a tinkling fairy-bell, heard aloft, 
In the midst of the merry chatter 
Of robin and linnet and wren and jay, — 
One syllable oft repeated ; 
He has but a word to say, 
And of that he will not be cheated." 

But why was not the grass-finch, his relative of 
the fields, in just as good voice when he arrived on 
the thirty- first? The last two springs this bird had 
to be on his singing-grounds several days before he 



ARRIVAL OF THE BIRDS. 69 

recovered his full powers of voice. On the twenty- 
ninth the phoebe came with his burden of sweet song, 
and the first of April brought Bewick's wren — sweet- 
voiced Arion of the suburbs — and the chipping 
sparrow, whose slender peal of song rang through 
my study window. Here my record stops for the 
present year; but by reference to my last year's 
notes (1891) it appears that Bewick's wren did not 
then arrive until April tenth, and chippy not until 
April twelfth. The difference in the seasons is 
doubtless the primary cause of this divergence in 
the time of arrival. April brings many other winged 
pilgrims, — the white-throated and white-crowned 
sparrows, the thrushes, the orioles, the tanagers, 
the cat-birds, the swallows and swifts, and some of 
the hardier warblers, while the great army of war- 
blers delay their coming till the first and second 
weeks in May. And all the while we are having bird 
concerts,, cantatas, oratorios, and opera festivals, 
mingled with some tragedy and a great deal of 
comedy, and there are love songs and cradle songs, 
matins and vespers, and twitterings expressive of 
every shade and variety of feeling. 

I yield to the temptation to add a brief article 
entitled *^ Watching the Parade," which was pub- 
lished in a New England journal in the summer of 
1893, and contains a record of some observations 
made during the previous spring. By comparison 
with the preceding part of this chapter, it will indi- 
cate the versatile character of bird study in the 



70 IN BIRD LAND. 

same season of different years. I shall give it 
almost verbatim as first published, hoping the 
rather ^^ free and easy" style will be generously 
overlooked by critical readers. 

Every spring and autumn for many years I have 
been watching the parade ; not a parade of soldiers, 
or of civic orders, or even of a menagerie ; but one 
of far more interest to the naturalist, — the pro- 
cession of the army in feathers. A w^onderful cor- 
tege it is, this army in bright array ; and every time 
you witness it, you add something new to your 
knowledge of bird life. The last spring has been no 
exception, although, when the pageant began, I 
wondered if I should see any new birds or hear any 
new songs, and even felt a little doubtful about it. 

But quite early a new bird was added to my list. 
It was the blue-winged warbler, which carries about 
a scientific name big enough to break its dainty 
back. Just think of calling a tiny bird Helmintho- 
phila pinus ! But happily it does not know its own 
name, and, like some of my readers, would not be 
able to pronounce it if it did, and therefore no 
serious harm is done. This bird may be known by 
the bright olive-green of its back, the pale blue of 
its wings, the pure yellow of its under parts, and the 
narrow black line running back through its eye. It 
seemed to be quite wary, yet I got near enough to 
see it catch insects on the wing like a wood-pewee, 
as well as pick them from the leaves of the trees. 

The bird student must sometimes let problems go 



ARRIVAL OF THE BIRDS, 71 

unsolved. For nearly, perhaps quite a week, three 
or four large, heavy-beaked birds flitted about in 
several tall tree-tops of the woods, but were so far 
up that, try as I would, I could not identify them 
even with my opera-glass. In my small collection 
of mounted birds there is a female evening gross- 
beak ; and the tree-top flitters looked more like it 
than any other bird of my acquaintance. If they 
were evening grossbeaks, it was a rare find; for 
these birds are almost unknown in this part of the 
country, only a few having ever been discovered in 
this State. Their usual locale is thought to be west 
of Lake Superior. I was sorely tempted to use a 
gun, but decided that it was just as well not to know 
some things as to massacre an innocent bird. 

However, other finds were more satisfactory. 
Strolling through the woods one day, I caught the 
notes of a bird song that did not sound familiar. 
Surely it was a vireo's quaint, continuous lay; but 
which of the vireos could it be ? It was different 
from any vireo minstrelsy I had ever heard. Peer- 
ing about in the bushes for the author of those 
elusive notes, I at length espied a little bird form, 
and the next moment my glass revealed the blue- 
headed or solitary vireo. It was the first time I had 
ever heard this little vocalist sing in the spring, 
although we have met — he and I — on familiar 
terms every season for many years. Here is a 
query : Why was blue-head silent other years, and 
so tuneful that spring? For he was often heard 
after that day. 



72 IN BIRD LAND. 

The song was varied and lively, sometimes run- 
ning high in the scale, and had not that absent- 
minded air which marks the roundelay of the 
warbling vireo. It is much more intense and 
expressive, and some notes are quite like certain 
runs of the brown thrasher's song. The bird did 
two other things that were a surprise : he chattered 
and scolded much like the ruby-crowned kinglet. 
Then he caught a miller, and, as it was too large to 
be swallowed whole, placed it under his claws pre- 
cisely like a chickadee or blue jay, and pulled it to 
pieces. This was a new trick to me, nor have I 
ever read, in any of the bird manuals, of his taking 
his dinner in this w^ay. 

The red-eyed vireo also chanted a little roundel 
that spring, as he pursued his journey northward, his 
song being slower in movement and less expressive 
and varied than that of his cousin just referred to. 

Indeed, the procession seemed to be especially 
musical during that spring. One day, in the last 
week in April, a new style of music rang out at the 
border of the woods, and I fairly trembled lest the 
jolly soloist should scud away before I could iden- 
tify him ; but he had no intention of making his 
escape, and giving the credit of his vocal efforts to 
somebody else in the bird world. At length I got 
my glass upon him. He proved to be the purple 
finch, — rosy little Mozart that he was ! For years 
he has passed through these woods with the vernal 
procession, but this was the first time he had ever 
been obliging enough to sing in my hearing. And 






ARRIVAL OP THE BIRDS, 73 

what a rolling, rollicking, little song it was, just as 
full of good cheer as bird song could be ! He 
continued his vocal rehearsal for many minutes on 
that day, but afterward he and his fellows were as 
mute as the inmates of a deaf and dumb asylum. A 
purple finch once sang here in the fall; but the 
music was quite harsh and squeaking, very different 
from his springtime melody. 

One of the most beautiful birds that have a part 
in the vernal parade is the rose-breasted grossbeak, 
— a bird that you will recognize at once by his 
white-and-black coat and the rosy shield he so 
bravely bears on his bosom. In his summer home, 
farther north, I have often heard his vivacious 
music (this was in northern Indiana) ; but until 
the past spring he has always been silent as he 
passed through this neighborhood, save that he 
would sometimes utter his sharp, metallic Chip, 
However, on the fourteenth of May two of these 
grossbeaks sang a most vigorous duet in the grove 
near my house ; and I wish you could have heard it, 
for it would have made you almost leap for joy, it 
was so jolly and rollicksome. At first you may be 
disposed to think the grossbeak's song much like 
the robin's, but you will soon find that it is finer in 
several respects, the tones being clearer and fuller, 
the utterance more rapid and varied, and the whole 
song much more spirited ; and that is saying a 
good deal, considering Cock Robin's cheery carols. 
No one should fail to hear this rosy-breasted min- 
strel, whatever else he may miss. It will make him 



74 



IN BIRD LAND. 



feel that life is worth living ; that if God made this 
bird so happy, he must intend that his rational 
creatures, who are of more value than a bird, should 
also be cheerful. 

Never were the birds so gentle and confiding as 
they were during that spring. A female redstart 
took up her residence in my yard for fully a week, 
flitting about in the trees and grape-arbor, seeking 
for nits and worms ; and you are to remember that 
I live in town (though in the outskirts), with many 
houses and people about, and an electric car whirl- 
ing along the street every few minutes. A dainty 
bay-breasted warbler — little witch ! — kept the red- 
start company, letting me stand beneath the trees 
on whose lower branches she tilted, and watch her 
agile movements ; yet one of my bird books declares 
that the bay- breasted warblers remain in the highest 
tree-tops of the woods ! Both these birds occasion- 
ally uttered a trill. 

The goldfinches, too, were very familiar. They 
came with the procession as far north as my neigh- 
borhood, but stopped here for the summer, instead 
of continuing their pilgrimage. Some of their 
brothers and sisters remained with me all winter. 
Within a few feet of my rear door stands a small 
apple-tree, in whose branches these feathered gold- 
flakes flashed about, and sang their childlike ditties, 
and one little madam fluttered in the leafy crotches 
of the twigs, fitting her body into them as if trying 
to see if they would make good nesting-sites ; the 
while Sir Goldfinch sang and sang at the top of his 



wHrnm^tmit^^ 



ARRIVAL OF THE BIRDS. 



75 



voice. Several white-crowned sparrows also came 
to eat seeds thrown out into the back yard. These 
handsome sparrows were not shy, but perched on 
the fence or the trees, and trilled their sweet 
refrains. 



76 



IN BIRD LAND. 



VI. 



WINGED VOYAGERS. 

THE subject of bird migration is one of absorb- 
ing interest, presenting many a perplexing 
problem to the student who cares to go into the 
philosophy of things. Why do the birds make these 
wonderful semi-annual pilgrimages, and whence came 
the original impulse, are questions often asked. With 
my limited opportunities for observation I cannot 
hope to shed much, if any, new light on the sub- 
ject ; yet it seems to me that some persons are dis- 
posed to invest it with more of an air of mystery than 
is really necessary. There are several patent, if not 
wholly satisfactory, reasons that may be assigned 
for the migrating impulse. 

As this is not a scientific treatise, the writer will 
not be over- methodical in presenting these reasons, 
but will mention them in the order in which they 
occur to him. If we keep in mind the invariable 
succession of the seasons, and that this annual rota- 
tion has continued for ages, and if we also remem- 
ber that all animals are dowered by their Creator 
with as much intelligence as is necessary for their 
well-being, much of the difficulty attaching to this 
subject will at once disappear. Birds, like their 






WINGED VOYAGERS, 77 

human kinsmen, learn hj experience and tutelage, 
and are also gifted with a sure instinct that amounts 
in many cases almost to reason. Take, for instance, 
this one fact. As the sun creeps northward in the 
spring, it pours a more and more intense heat upon 
the northern portions of the tropical and sub-tropical 
regions. The heat would soon become intolerable 
to certain birds, which have doubtless tried the 
experiment of spending the summer in equatorial 
countries ; or if individuals now living have not 
tried it, perhaps some of their more or less remote 
ancestors have. That birds do make experiments 
is proved by the fact that several pets of mine 
will carefully "sample " a new kind of food offered 
them, and if they do not find it to their taste, 
will let it severely alone; nor is it any the less 
evident that young birds receive instruction from 
their elders. Thus the necessity of leaving the 
torrid regions as summer approaches may have 
been impressed on the migrating species from time 
immemorial. 

Again, as spring advances, insect and vegetable 
life is revived - in regions farther north, and this 
certainly must act as a magnet upon the birds, 
drawing them from point to point as the supply of 
food becomes scarce in the more southern localities. 
Then, let us suppose for a moment that all the birds 
did remain in the south through the summer ; there 
would sooner or later be a bird famine in the land, 
for the supply of seeds and insects would soon be 
exhausted. Our feathered folk are simply obliged, 



78 



IN BIRD LAND. 



on account of the exigencies of food, to scatter 
themselves over a larger extent of country. They 
solve the problem of food supply and demand by 
these annual pilgrimages to the boreal lands of 
plenty. 

To go a little more to the root of the matter, we 
may easily imagine how the migrating spirit got its 
first impulse and gradually became evolved into a 
habit of something like scientific precision. If the 
first birds lived in tropical climates, as was probably 
the case, some of them, as the food supply became 
exhausted, would be crowded northward, or would 
go of their own accord, and wherever they went 
they would find well-filled natural larders. Having 
once discovered that spring replenished the north 
with food, they would soon learn the desirability of 
making periodical journeys to that part of the globe. 
With this constant quest for food must also be 
coupled the instinctive desire of most birds for 
seclusion during the season of reproduction, — an 
instinct that would naturally drive them northward 
into the less thickly tenanted districts. But it may be 
objected that many species make long aerial voyages, 
passing over vast tracts of country to reach their 
chosen summer habitats in various parts of the 
north ; and it is well known that the same individ- 
uals will return again and again, on the recurrence 
of spring, to the same locality. How are these facts 
to be accounted for? 

If we accept the glacial theory — a hypothesis 
pretty well established now among scientific men — 



iiM^!^^mMmm 



WINGED VOYAGERS. 79 

we may readily conceive that, as the sun melted the 
ice at a greater distance in both directions from the 
equator, the habitable area of the earth's surface 
would gradually become enlarged. For the sake of 
vividness let us fancy ourselves living at that period 
of the world's history. Let us select a point north 
of the equator where a given pair of birds can live 
in summer. They find plenty of food there, and 
are comparatively undisturbed by other birds, and 
they therefore become attached to the place, most 
feathered folk having a strong '' homing instinct." 
When winter comes, they and their progeny are 
forced to retire to the south ; but they do not for- 
get their pleasant summer haunt, their Mecca in 
the north, and therefore, at the approach of the 
following spring, they obey the home impulse and 
hie by easy stages to the beloved spot. Some of 
their number doubtless find it possible from time to 
time to push farther northward, and thus other 
breeding-haunts are selected. As the glacial ac- 
cumulations melt away, the whole temperate region 
and a large part of the frigid zone become habitable. 
All this takes place by a very gradual process, re- 
quiring thousands of years, thus giving ample time 
for heredity to infuse the migratory habit into the 
nature of the birds. Every new generation would 
learn the route and other needful details from 
their predecessors, and thus the process would go 
on in an unending circuit year by year. 

After the foregoing was written, my attention was 
called to the following quotation from Dr. J. A. 



So IN BIRD LAND, 

Allen's valuable paper on the ^' Origin of the In- 
stinct of Migration in Birds." The extract is taken 
from an article by Frank M. Chapman, published in 
" The Auk " for January, 1894 : ^' Nothing is doubtless 
more thoroughly established than that a warm tem- 
perate or sub-tropical climate prevailed down to the 
close of the Tertiary epoch, nearly to the Northern 
Pole, and that climate was previously everywhere so 
far equable that the necessity for migration can 
hardly be supposed to have existed. With the later 
refrigeration of the northern regions, bird life must 
have been crowded thence toward the tropics, and 
the struggle for life thereby greatly intensified. The 
less yielding forms may have become extinct ; those 
less sensitive to climatic change would seek to extend 
the boundaries of their range by a slight removal 
northward during the milder intervals of summer, 
only, however, to be forced back again by the recur- 
rence of winter. Such migration must have been at 
first ^incipient and gradual,' extending and strength- 
ening as the cold wave receded, and opened up a 
wider area within which existence in summer became 
possible. What was at first a forced migration 
would become habitual, and through the heredity 
of habit give rise to that wonderful faculty which 
we term the instinct of migration." The reader's 
attention is also directed to Mr. Chapman's own 
article in the number of ^' The Auk " indicated. 

It may be asked why some species remain in 
torrid and temperate cHmates, while others wing 
their way to the far north, even beyond the boun- 



WINGED VOYAGERS. 8 1 

dary of the Arctic Circle. My answer is, There is 
some Power that has wisely arranged all these mat- 
ters, either by gradual development or by an original 
creative fiat. Every species is made to fit with nice 
precision into its peculiar niche in the creation. 
Perhaps Bryant suggests the true explanation in his 
poem entitled '*To a Waterfowl " : — - 

" There is a Power whose care 
Teaches thy way along that pathless coast, 

The desert and illimitable air, 
Lone wandering, but not lost." 

This may seem like begging the question ; yet, to 
my mind, it is impossible to develop a philosophy 
of the universe without assuming an original crea- 
tive Intelligence. True, the laws of evolution will 
account for many of the details, and birds, hke men, 
are empowered in a large measure to work out their 
own destiny ; but somewhere there must be a Power 
that has infused into Nature all these wonderful po- 
tentiaUties of development. Involution must pre- 
cede evolution. 

But this is speculation. Account for them as we 
may, the facts are evident. Within the circle of my 
own observation there is abundant proof of this varied 
but wise adaptation in Nature. There, for example, 
is the tiny golden-crested kinglet, which remains here 
all winter, no matter how severe the weather, and 
seems to be the embodiment of good cheer; whereas 
the brown thrasher, a bird many times as large, 
would be likely to perish in the first snow-squall. 
Then, when spring arrives. Master Kinglet hies to 

6 



^2 



IN BIRD LAND. 



the north for the breedmg-season, while Monsieur 
Thrasher comes up from the south and becomes 
my all-summer intimate. 

Another matter of intense interest concerning bird 
migration is that the migrants which winter farthest 
north are, as a rule, the first to arrive in the spring 
at their summer homes or vernal feeding-grounds. 
For instance, in the latter part? of March or the 
beginning of April, while the thrashers, cat-birds, 
and others which winter in our Southern States, are 
arriving in New England, New York, Pennsylvania, 
and Ohio, the warbler army, which spends the winter 
in the West Indies, Yucatan, and Central America, 
is just crossing over from those countries to the 
southern borders of the United States. 

When autumn comes, experience has taught the 
migrants that their only safety lies in making their 
way to the south before cold weather sets in; for 
many of them certainly do start on this voyage 
long before winter drives them from their northern 
haunts. In my opinion, they are gifted with suf- 
ficient reason — call it instinct, if you like — to do 
this, and I do not think they are moved by an 
uncontrollable impulse which acts upon them as 
if they were mere automata. 

Portions of the migrating army often overlap. 
For example, the juncos and tree-sparrows are 
winter residents in my neighborhood, but very 
frequently they remain here a month or more after 
the earliest arrivals from the south. Presently, 
however, they grow nervous, flit about uneasily, 



WINGED VOYAGERS, Z^ 

trill little snatches of song, inure themselves to 
flight by longer or shorter excursions about the 
country, and then join the northward procession 
en route for their breeding-haunts in British Amer- 
ica. With regret I bid them adieu, but find com- 
pensation in the knowledge that their places will 
be supplied by a brilliant company of summer 
residents. 

One of the strangest features of migration is the 
fact that a bird will sometimes make the voyage 
from north to south, and vice versa — or a part of 
the voyage — alone, at least as far as companionship 
with individuals of its own kind is concerned. 
Whether this is done advertently or inadvertently I 
am unable to say, but the fact cannot be disputed. 
In the spring of 1892, as noted in another chapter, 
a hooded warbler was flitting about a gravel bank in 
a wooded hollow, and although I scoured the coun- 
try for miles around day after day, I never met 
another bird of this species. The little Apollo in 
feathers was so gentle and familiar that surely his 
mates would not have escaped my notice had there 
been any in the neighborhood. Why he preferred 
to travel alone, or in company with other species 
rather than his own kin, might be an interesting 
problem in avian psychology. A little farther down 
the glen a single mourning warbler was also seen at 
almost the same date. His companions had prob- 
ably wished him bon voyage^ and left him to strike 
out in an independent course through the trackless 
ocean of air. 



84 



IN BIRD LAND. 



That the army of migrants travel mostly by night 
is a well-known fact that can be verified by any one 
who will stand out-of-doors and listen to their chirp- 
ing overhead. They seem to move in loose flocks, 
for there are intervals of complete silence, followed 
by a promiscuous chirping from many throats. Nor 
are these nocturnal calls all uttered by a single 
species, but usually a number of species seem to be 
travelling in company. One might say, therefore, 
that the feathered army moves in squads. As they 
travel in the dark, very Httle can be said about their 
flight ; but every student has found species of birds 
in an early morning ramble which he could not find 
anywhere on the previous day, proving that they must 
have arrived in the night. Here is a single excerpt 
— ■- many might be given — from my note-book : ^' On 
the third of March, 1894, 1 took a long stroll into the 
country, remaining in the fields until dusk ; not a 
single meadow-lark was to be seen or heard. At 
daybreak next morning, however, the shrill whistle 
of I know not how many larks rose like musical 
incense from the fields and commons in the rear of 
my house. Depend upon it, had these lavish min- 
strels been in the neighborhood during the previous 
afternoon, they would not have escaped my atten- 
tion, for they could not have kept their music in 
their larynxes, not they ! There is a cog in Nature's 
machinery lost if the meadow-larks are silent for 
a half day in the spring." 

In 1885 Mr. WilHam Brewster, the well-known 
ornithologist, made some intensely interesting dis- 



WINGED VOYAGERS. ' 85 

coveries on the nocturnalHight of migrants, at Point 
Lepreaux Lighthouse, New Brunswick. The prin- 
cipal lantern, which was in the top of the tower, 
cast a light that could be seen fifteen miles away in 
clear weather. Even on dark and foggy nights this 
lantern would throw out a strong hght to such a dis- 
tance that a bird coming into the lighted area could 
readily be seen. On stormy nights the lighthouse 
seemed to possess a fatal attraction for the lost and 
rain-beaten birds, which would fly toward it and 
often dash against the glass, the roof, and other 
portions of the tower with such force that they 
fell dead or disabled. Mr. Brewster could see 
them approaching in the prism of light, some dash- 
ing themselves with fatal effect against the tower, 
but more, fortunately, turning aside or gliding 
upward over the roof, and then pressing on toward 
the west with incessant chirping. During rainy 
weather a larger proportion would strike the brilliant 
obstruction. 

It is interesting to notice that different species 
composed the companies that passed the lighthouse. 
For instance, on the night of September first, seven 
different species of warblers and one red- eyed vireo 
were killed or disabled, and one Traill's flycatcher 
entered the mouth of the ventilator, and came down 
through it into the lantern. A few evenings later, 
about forty per cent of the specimens identified were 
Maryland yellow- throats, forty per cent more red- 
eyed vireos, and the remaining twenty per cent 
were made up of two kinds of thrushes and six kinds 



^6 



IN BIRD LAND, 



of warblers. These figures are given to show the 
heterogeneous composition of the migrant army. 

Mr. Brewster also found that no birds came about 
the lantern except on densely cloudy or foggy 
nights, and that they came in the greatest numbers 
when the first hour or two of the evening had been 
clear and was succeeded by fog or storm. These data 
would seem to prove that the birds began their noc- 
turnal journey with the expectation of having pleas- 
ant weather, and when the fog or storm rose later in 
the evening, they flew lower and got bewildered by 
the glare of the lighthouse. 

Many theories of bird migration have been pro- 
posed and argued at length, but, on the whole, I 
incline to Mr. Brewster's theory that the old birds, 
having learned the advantage of these semi-annual 
expeditions, and having also determined the route by 
means of certain landmarks, act as aerial pilots to 
the army of young birds to whom the way is still 
unknown. Mountain ranges, river valleys, coast 
lines, and sheets of landlocked water doubtless serve 
the purpose of guide-posts to these airy travellers. 
Much as has been written on the subject, however, 
there still remains a large field for original research. 






PLUMAGE OF YOUNG BIRDS. 87 



VII. 

PLUMAGE OF YOUNG BIRDS. 

IT is surprising what odd and variegated costumes 
are sometimes worn by the juvenile members 
of the bird community. Frequently their attire is 
so different from that of their elders that even the 
expert ornithologist may be sorely puzzled to deter- 
mine the category to which they belong ; yet there 
are usually some characteristic markings, however 
obscure, by which their places in the avian system 
may be fixed. As a rule, the plumage of young 
birds is more striped and mottled than that of mature 
specimens, Nature playing some odd pranks of color- 
mixing in tiding a bird over from callow infancy to 
full-fledged life. Fashion plates in the world of 
bantlings would be of httle account, as no fixed 
patterns are followed. 

Some parts of the growing bird's plumage change 
to the normal color sooner than others. I remem- 
ber a young male indigo bird that I saw in October, 
whose garb, just after fledging, must have been a 
warm brown almost like that of the adult female ; 
but now he had cast off a part of his infantile robes, 
and put on in their stead the cerulean of his male 
parent ; his tail, rump, and the base of his wings 



ss 



IN BIRD LAND. 



were blue, while the rest of his plumage was brown. 
He made a unique and pretty picture as he sat 
atilt on a blackberry stem, asking me with loud 
Tsips to admire his quaint toilet. Early in the 
spring I have seen indigo birds in whose plumage 
the tints were quite differently blended and arranged. 

What a party-colored suit the young bluebird 
wears ! His breast, instead of being plain brick-red 
as in the case of the adult bird, is profusely striped 
with dark brown on a background of soiled white ; 
and his upper parts, in Heu of the warm azure of 
riper years, are a lustrous brown curiously mottled 
with tear-shaped blocks of white ; while his wings 
and tail have already assumed the normal blue of 
this species. In the days of his youth the chipping- 
sparrow also dons a striped vest, so that, if it were 
not for his smaller size, it would be difficult to dis- 
tinguish him from his relative, the grass-finch. 

My admiration was especially stirred, one mid- 
summer day, by the dainty appearance of a small 
coterie of bush-sparrows flitting about on a railroad 
which I was pursuing on foot ; a large patch on 
their wings was of a dark, glossy brown tint, 
extremely pretty, and looking precisely as if it had 
been painted by the deft hand of an artist. Their 
under parts were variously streaked with white and 
dusk. At first I scarcely recognized my famihar 
little sylvan friends ; but their intimacy with several 
adult specimens, as well as several well-known diag- 
nostic markings, settled the question of their identity 
beyond a doubt. 



PLUMAGE OF YOUNG BIRDS. 89 

Not every person is aware that the common red- 
headed woodpecker is no red-head at all during the 
first summer of his buoyant young life, but a black- 
head instead, or, rather, his head and neck are very 
dark gray. However, one day in September I was 
delighted and amused to find an adolescent wood- 
pecker whose head and neck were beginning to 
turn quite reddish, flecked everywhere with white, 
giving him a decidedly picturesque appearance as 
he scuddled up an oblique fence-stake. Of course 
the red-head is always siii generis, but in this case 
he seemed to be more so than usual. Nearly all 
the woodpeckers — the downy, the hairy, and the 
golden- winged — are devoid of the red spots on 
their heads, while young, to prevent them, I suppose, 
from becoming vain. 

Sometimes an entirely foreign tint is introduced 
into the plumage of the young bird during his tran- 
sition state. One day I was surprised to observe 
a decidedly bluish cast on the striped breast of a 
young towhee bunting, which was all the more 
curious because there is no blue whatever in the 
plumage of either the adult male or female. But 
the most curious freak of Nature's dyeing I have 
ever seen in the bird world was in the case of a 
young scarlet tanager, whose body, including the 
wings, was completely girded with a band of white, 
the border of which was quite irregular. As every 
observer knows, the only colors visible in the adult 
male's plumage are black and scarlet; still, when 
the scarlet feathers are pushed aside, they show 



90 IN BIRD LAND. 

white underneath, and that may account for the 
albino quaUty of this specimen. 

When he is first fledged, the pattern of the young 
cardinal grossbeak's plumage very much resembles 
that of his mother ; but soon the bright red of his 
full dress begins to peep here and there through the 
grayish-olive of his kilts and trousers, so to speak, 
making him look as if he had been meddling with a 
keg of red paint and had splashed himself liberally 
with it. By and by there is a very odd blending of 
tints in his suit. Scarcely less curious is the garb 
of the young white-crowned sparrow; his whole 
head is black or blackish- brown, except a tiny speck 
of white in the centre of the crown, gleaming like 
a diamond in its dark setting. In the adult bird 
the whole crown is a ghstening white, bordered on 
each side by a black band, which circles about on 
the forehead and separates the crown-piece from 
the white superciliary line. 

Some of the warblers are scarcely recognizable in 
their juvenile attire. For example, the young black- 
poll, bay-breasted, and chestnut-sided warblers bear 
litde, if any, resemblance to their parents, whose 
diversified nuptial robes make our woodlands radiant 
in the spring. The young are quite tame in their 
soiled olive plumes, and look so much alike that 
the ornithologist is often at his wits' end to tell 
them apart. Were it not for the yellow rumps of the 
magnolia and myrtle warblers when young, one 
would scarcely know them from a dozen other 
species as they pursue their journey southward in 



PLUMAGE OF YOUNG BIRDS. 91 

the autumn. The Maryland yellow-throat does not 
deign to wear his black mask until he is about eight 
months old, and the boy redstart contents himself 
with his mamma's style of dress until he returns in 
the spring from his sojourn in the south, and does 
not seem to be ashamed to be tied to her apron- 
string. And there is that natty little dandy, the 
ruby-crowned kinglet — it is said, on good authority, 
that he must be two years old before he is entitled 
to wear the ruby gem in his forehead ; which must 
be a sore deprivation for this little aristocrat in 
feathers. Perhaps in kingletdom a bird does not 
become of age until he is two years old. 

Thus it will be seen that the study of ornithology 
is made more difficult, and at the same time more 
interesting, by this change of toilet among the birds, — 
more difficult, because the observer must learn to 
identify the birds in their youthful as well as in their 
adult plumage ; and more interesting, because of 
the greater variety thus given to this branch of 
scientific inquiry. 



92 



IN BIRD LAND, 



VIII. 



KEST-HUNTING. 



NOTHING in Nature is more pregnant with 
suggestion than the nest of a bird. The 
story of one of these deftly woven dwelHngs in the 
woods, if fully written, might prove almost as weird 
and romantic as the history of a castle on the Rhine. 
What madrigals, what paeans, have been sung, and 
what victories celebrated, from the time the first 
fibres were braided until the chirping nesthngs were 
able to shift for themselves ! And, alas, how many 
fond hopes have perished as well ! No doubt the 
ruses and subterfuges employed to elude cunning 
foes or ward off their murderous attacks, would fill 
a volume of valuable information on military tactics. 
One might write comedies or tragedies about the 
nest-life of the birds that would be no less inter- 
esting than realistic. More than that, the study of 
these wonderful fabrics would virtually be a study 
of the psychology of the feathered artisans, each 
nest being an index of a special type of mind and 
a measure of the bird's mental resources. As 
William Hamilton Gibson has well said : ^' To know 
the nidification and nest-hfe of a bird is to get the 



NEST-HUNTING. 93 

cream of its history ; " tHan which nothing could be 
truer or more aptly expressed. 

No wonder the poets have so often been thrown 
into lyrical moods over the homesteads of the birds ! 
Mrs. Margaret E. Sangster's poem on " The Build- 
ing of the Nest " is perhaps not unfamiliar to most 
readers ; but one stanza is so graceful and rhythmi- 
cal that it begs for quotation at this point : — 

" They '11 come again to the apple-tree — 

Robin and all the rest — 
When the orchard branches are fair to see 

In the snow of blossoms dressed, 
And the prettiest thing in the world will be 

The building of the nest.'' 

In one of my rambles I found an abandoned 
towhee bunting's nest containing three eggs, and 
could not help speculating as to the cause of its 
desertion. Might there have been a quarrel 
between husband and wife, making a separation 
necessary? I am loath to believe it, although, if 
certain acute observers are correct, divorce is not 
wholly unknown in the bird community. But in 
this case I am inclined to think that some enemy 
had destroyed the female, for a male flitted about 
in the bushes, calling a good deal and singing at 
intervals, and there seemed to be a plaintive note 
in his song, as if he might be chanting an elegy. 
At all events, the pair that built the nest had had 
their tragedy. 

Every bird-student must admit that his quest for 
nests often ends in disappointment, because many 



94 



IN BIRD LAND. 



birds are adepts at coPxcealment, while others build 
in places where you would not think of looking. 
However, I have had but little difficulty in finding 
the nests of the brown thrasher, which erects an 
inartistic platform of sticks, bound together by a few 
grass fibres, and thus is easily descried in the bushes, 
where it is usually placed. Early in the spring I 
found the nest of a pair of these birds in a thick 
clump of bushes near the edge of a woodland, and 
resolved to keep watch over it until the young 
family had left their home. The parent birds in 
this case were very solicitous for the safety of their 
young. Every time I called they set up a pitiful 
to-do, which invariably made me hurry away, after 
a timid peep into the cradle. There is as much 
difference in the temperaments of birds of the same 
species as there is among persons belonging to the 
same family. While the thrashers in question 
seemed to be terrified at my presence, others 
driven from their nests displayed little or no fear, 
but sat quietly on a perch near by and allowed me 
to examine their domicile without so much as a 
chirp. 

The brown thrasher has surprised me by the 
variety of places he selects for building his log 
house. Wilson Flagg in his book, "A Year with 
the Birds,'' says that this bird usually builds on the 
ground; and Mr. Eldridge E. Fish, who writes 
pleasantly about the birds of western New York, 
bears similar testimony. Perhaps thrasher-fashion 
in New England and New York differs from 






NEST-HUNTING. 95 

thrasher-fashion in Ohio (in which locaHty the 
birds display the best taste I will not say) ; for 
during the spring of 1890 I found but two nests 
on the ground, and was surprised to find even them, 
while at least fifteen were discovered in other places. 
Most of them were on low thorn-bushes, but not all. 
One was built in a brush-heap, one on a pile of 
" cord-wood,'^ another on a small stump screened 
by some bushes, and two on a rail fence. Of the 
last two, one was partly supported by poison-ivy 
vines and partly by a rail; the other was built 
entirely on a rail in a projecting corner of the 
fence. 

The thrasher, as has been said, builds an artless 
platform of sticks that in some cases barely holds 
together long enough to answer the purpose for 
which it was intended. In this respect its habits 
differ from those of the wood-thrush, a bird that 
is very abundant and musical in my neighborhood. 
I have found many of the wood-thrush's nests, 
which are built in the crotches of small saplings in 
the thickest part of the woods, and are made almost 
as substantial as the adobe dwellings of the robin. 
The thrush does not use as much mortar as his red- 
breasted relative ; otherwise there is a close resem- 
blance between the nests of the two birds. 

It was amusing to find pieces of newspaper 
bedizening the houses of the wood-thrushes so 
frequently, though it cannot be said that they 
showed the highest literary taste in their selec- 
tions; for one or two of the fragments contained 



96 IN BIRD LAND. 

accounts of political caucuses. However, it would 
be too much to assume that the birds had read 
them, as many of us '' humans " find such literature 
too deep for our comprehension. I shall neither 
eulogize nor stigmatize this favorite minstrel by 
calling him a politician, although if one were to 
regard his nesting-habits alone, he deserves that 
sobriquet quite as well as the white-eyed vireo. 

That parasite among American birds, the female 
cow-bunting, audaciously spirits her eggs into the 
wood-thrush's nest, to be hatched with those that 
properly belong there, w^hile she and her mate sit in 
the trees near by and whistle their taunting airs, and 
watch to see whether their dupe attends faithfully to 
the additional household cares imposed upon her. 
When the birds are hatched, the victim of this piece 
of imposture innocently feeds her foster children 
with the best tidbits she can find, spite of the fact 
that they may soon crowd her own offspring out of 
the nest-home. The wonder is that she does not 
discover the trick at once ; for her eggs are deep 
blue, while the cow-bird's are white, speckled with 
ashy brown. Can the wood-thrush be color-blind ? 

About two miles from town, along the banks of a 
small creek, was the nest of that interesting little 
bird, the summer warbler, — a dainty structure, com- 
posed of downy material, and deftly lodged among 
the twigs of a sapling at the foot of a chff. A cold 
spring gurgled from the rocks near by ; the willows 
and buttonwood trees bent to the balmy breezes, 
and the tinkling of the brook mingled with the songs 



NEST-HUNTING. 97 

of many birds. A place lor day-dreams truly, and 
the summer warblers were the dryads and nymphs 
flitting through the realms of fancy. If all birds were 
as astute as the summer warbler, the race of cow- 
buntings would soon become extinct, or would soon 
have to change their methods of propagation, and go 
to rearing their own families. Our little strategist, 
when she comes home and finds a cowbird's egg 
dropped into her nest, begins forthwith to add another 
story, and thus leaves the interloper in the cellar, 
with a floor between it and her warm breast. It 
is a genuine case of " being left out in the cold." 
I have found several of these exquisite towers that 
were three stories high, on the top of which the 
little bird sat perched like a goddess on the summit 
of Olympus. (My simile may seem a trifle far- 
fetched, but I shall let it stand.) But why, you 
dear little sprite, do you not merely pitch the offen- 
sive egg out of the nest, instead of going to all the 
trouble of building a loft ? No answer, save an 
untranslatable trill, comes from the throat of the 
dainty minstrel.^ 

Some years ago I witnessed a curious bit of bird- 
behavior that I have never seen described in any of 
the numerous books on ornithology which I have 

1 Mr. Eldridge E. Fish, to whom reference has already 
been made, after reading this article, which first appeared 
in a weekly paper, suggested in a letter that the little warbler 
could not well remove the intruded egg without breaking it, 
which would spoil her nest altogether. Hence she simply 
adds another story to her dwelling. This is doubtless the 
true explanation. 

7 



consulted. I make reference to it here for the first 
time. I was strolling along the banks of a broad 
river in northern Indiana on the first of June, when 
a warm, steady rain set in. How the birds contrive 
to keep their eggs and nestlings dry during a shower 
had long been an enigma to me, and now was my 
time to find out. Knowing where a summer warbler 
had built her nest in some bushes, I cautiously ap- 
proached, and then stood looking down on the bird 
before me, which showed no disposition to leave her 
progeny to the mercy of the elements. It was a 
picture indeed ! The darling little mother — how 
can one help using an endearing term ! — sat with 
her wings and tail spread out gracefully over the rim 
of the nest all the way round, thus making a perfect 
umbrella of her lithe, dainty body. 

. Nothing could differ more from the airy out-door 
nest of the summer warbler than the dark subter- 
ranean caverns of the swallows in the bank of the 
creek. One day, while sauntering along a stream, I 
noticed a hole in the opposite bank. I passed on, 
but on second thought turned to look at the excava- 
tion a little more closely, when a swallow darted like 
an arrow into it, and in a few moments made as 
quick an exit. Wading across the creek, I thrust 
my walking-stick, which was almost four feet long, 
into the orifice over its entire length without reach- 
ing the end ! Why a bird, so neat in attire and so 
agile on the wing, should build her nest in a dark 
Erebus like that, is a Sphinx's riddle that must be 
left to wiser heads to solve. 



NEST-HUNTING. 99 

What a contrast is the open-air hammock of the 
Baltimore oriole, swinging from the flexible branches 
of a buttonwood tree a little farther up the stream ! 
How softly the chirping brood within is rocked by 
the breezes that sweep down from the slopes, laden 
with the odor of clover blossoms ! Somewhere near 
there must be a warbling vireo's nest, for one of 
these birds is singing in the trees ; but my eyes are 
not sharp enough to descry its pensile domicile. 

On my way home, on the top of a hill, I step 
casually up to a small thorn-bush, whose branches 
and leaves are thickly matted together, and, as I 
push the foliage aside, there is a flutter of wings, 
followed by a rapid chirping, and a little bird flits 
away, pretending to be seriously wounded. It is a 
bush-sparrow. Cosily placed beneath the leafy roof 
among the thick boughs is the procreant cradle. 
What could be more dainty ! A little nest, woven 
of fine grass-fibres, deftly lined with hair, and con- 
taining four speckled eggs, real gems. How " beau- 
tiful for situation " is this tiny cottage on the hill ! 
Here the feathered poets may sit on their leafy 
verandas, look down into the green valleys, and 
compose verses on the pastoral attractions of Nature. 
One is almost tempted to spin a romance about the 
happy couple. 

On returning, one day, from an ornithological 
jaunt, I met my friend, the young farmer, who 
knows something about my furor for the birds. 
There was a knowing smile on his sunburned face. 
" I know where there 's a killdeer's nest," he said ; 



100 IN BIKD LAMU. 

" would you like to see it ? " Tired out as I was 
with my long walk, I exclaimed : ^' Yes, sir ! I '11 
follow you to the end of the world to see a plover's 
nest." The sentence was added merely by way of 
mild (not wild) hyperbole. A shallow pit in the 
open corn-field, lined with a few chips and pebbles, 
constituted the nest of the plover, not having so 
much as a spear of grass to protect it from rain and 
storm. It contained one egg and a callow youngster, 
the egg being quite large at one end and pointed at 
the other, which gave it a very uncouth shape. My 
young friend informed me that there had been five 
eggs when he found the nest, all lying with their 
acute ends toward the centre; the next time he 
went to look there were only four, then three, and 
finally only two. Evidently the parent birds were 
having a serious time guarding their homestead from 
marauders. On going to the place some days later, 
I found both the egg and the baby plover gone, and 
I could only hope that no mischance had befallen 
them. 

Strange as it may seem, the winter is a favorable 
season for nest-hunting. True, the birds are not 
then at home, to speak with a good deal of license, 
or engaged in rearing families ; but the deserted 
structures may be more readily found after the 
leaves have fallen from the trees and bushes. As I 
stroll through the woods or the marsh on a winter 
day, scores of nests that escaped my eye during the 
summer are to be seen. Especially is this the case 
after a snowfall, for the nests catch the descending 



NEST-HUNTING, lOI 

flakes which are piled up in them in downy mounds, 
and thus attract the attention of the observer. I 
have often felt inclined to heap upon myself the 
most caustic epithets for having passed again and 
again, during the breeding-season, so near the nest 
of an interesting bird without knowing of its exist- 
ence until winter's frosts had stripped the coppice 
of its leaves, and have resolved as often that the 
next season shall not find me napping. 

In the marsh which is one of my favorite trudging- 
grounds, I made a quaint discovery some winters 
ago, which has raised more than one query in my 
mind. One day, after a snowfall, I found many 
deserted nests in the thickets. Brushing the snow 
out of them revealed, in the bottom of each basket, 
a small pile of the seeds and broken shells of wild- 
rose and thorn berries. Why had the birds put 
them there — if it was the birds? Perhaps the 
winter birds, when they arrived in the autumn, 
found these old nests good storehouses in which to 
lay by their winter supplies. I have never seen the 
birds feeding on them, but, as spring approached, 
the berry seeds had nearly all disappeared. 

Come with me, for I know a pleasant, half-clois- 
tered field of clover which is the habitat of a number 
of charming little birds. Just where it is shall 
remain one of my semi- sylvan secrets, for one must 
not betray all the confidences of one's feathered 
intimates. The field cuts a right angle in a wood- 
land, by which it is, therefore, bounded on the east 
and north, while toward the west and south the 



I02 IN BIRD LAND. 

undulating country stretches away like a billowy sea 
of green. The woods themselves, on the sides 
adjacent to the field, are hemmed and fringed with 
a thick growth of saplings, bushes, and brambles, 
where the feathered husbands sit and hymn their 
joy by the hour to their little mates hugging their 
nests in the clover and the copse. It is a quiet spot, 
— one of Nature's nunneries. Human dwellings may 
be seen in the distance ; but it is seldom that any 
one, save a mooning rambler like myself, goes there 
to disturb the peace of the feathered tenants. 

Here, one summer a few years ago, a pair of 
those wary birds the yellow-breasted chats built a 
nest, which they placed snugly in the blackberry 
bushes that bordered and partly hid the rail-fence. 
I kept close reconnoissance on this little home- 
stead until the nascent inmates were about half- 
fledged, when, to my dismay, every one of them 
was kidnapped by some despicable nest-robber. 
My own sorrow was equalled only by the inexpres- 
sible anguish of the bereaved parents. To add to 
my troubles, a nestful of young indigo-birds came 
to grief in the same way. There must be, it seems, 
a system of brigandage in every realm, be it human 
or faunal. 

A pair of bush-sparrows, however, were more for- 
tunate in their brood-rearing. One day, while 
standing near the fence, I noticed a bush-sparrow, 
bearing an insect in her bill, dart down into the 
clover, a short distance over in the field. I walked 
to the spot, when she flew up with an uneasy chirp, 



NEST-HUNTING. 103 

proclaiming a secret that she could not keep. 
There on the grass, sure enough, was her nestful of 
little ones. Some accident must have befallen the 
fibrous cot, for the weeds and clover were broken 
down and trampled flat all around it, so that it sat 
loosely on the ground, without even a blade of grass 
to shelter it. Fearing that buccaneers in the shape 
of jays or hawks might rob the nest, I broke off a 
number of weeds and made a sort of thatched roof 
over it ; that would also protect the panting infants 
from the sun, which was beating down like a furnace. 
Then I took my stand a few rods away, to see what 
the old birds would do. Erelong both the papa 
and mamma came with billsome morsels in their 
mouths, and, after fluttering about uneasily for a 
few minutes, darted down to the nest and fed their 
young. Of course, they first had to peep, and peer, 
and cant their dainty heads this way and that, to 
examine the roof I had improvised for the nest, 
wondering, no doubt, what kind of a bungling archi- 
tect had been at work there ; but finally they 
seemed to think all was well. Perhaps in their 
hearts they thanked me for my thoughtful care. 

A day or two later I called again, even at the risk 
of coming de trop. The weeds arched over the 
bird crib at my former visit having withered, I made 
them another green roof, sheltering them as cosily 
as I could and leaving a small opening at the side 
for an entrance. After an absence of a few minutes 
I crept surreptitiously back to the enchanted spot, — 
for it drew me like a loadstone, — and there sat the 



I04 IN BIRD LAND. 

trim little mother on her cradle, covering her chil- 
dren to keep them warm, her reddish-brown tail 
daintily reaching out through the doorway. She did 
not fly up as I bent lovingly over her, and presently 
I stole away, desirous not to disturb her. 

The bush-sparrow is a captivating little bird, 
graceful of form and sweet of voice, singing his 
cheerful trills from early spring until far past mid- 
summer. The song makes me think of a silver 
thread running through a woof of golden sunshine, 
carried forward by a swinging shuttle of pearl. I 
think the figure is not far-fetched. He is quite 
partial to a dense little thorn-bush for a nesting- 
place, often concealing his grassy cottage so cun- 
ningly that you must look sharply for it among the 
leaves and twigs, or it will escape your eye. 

• One of the neatest and prettiest denizens of my 
clover-field was the goldfinch. Wings of black and 
coat of bright yellow, he went bounding through 
the ether, rising and falling in graceful festoons of 
flight, in such a lightsome way he seemed to be 
rocking himself on the breeze. How jauntily he 
wore his tiny black cap, little exquisite of the field 
that he is, to whom I always go hat in hand ! He 
deserves a monograph all to himself, but at this time 
I can spare him only a few paragraphs. 

As a rule, the goldfinches prefer to build their 
nests in small trees, often selecting the maples along 
the suburban streets of the city. I was greatly 
surprised, therefore, to find a nest in my clover- 
field, where there were no trees at all. Noticing a 



N£S T-H UN TING. I O 5 

bird fly into a clump of blackberry bushes one day, 
I took it for a female indigo-bird. A nest was soon 
found woven very neatly and compactly, and having 
not only grass-fibres wrought into its structure, but 
also wool and thistle-down. A queer indigo-bird's 
nest, I mused. The wool in the cup was ruffled 
and loose, and taking it for a deserted homestead, I 
carelessly thrust my hand into it. The next moment 
I was sorry for the thoughtless act, for the material 
looked so fresh that I decided it must be an unfin- 
ished bird-cradle. I resolved to discover the own- 
ers, if possible. Two days later it was in the same 
condition. Had I driven away the little builders 
by laying defiling hands on the nest? I felt like a 
culprit, and waited a week before again venturing to 
visit the place, when, as I approached, a female gold- 
finch flew from the nest, uncovering five dainty 
white eggs, set like pearls in the bottom of the cup. 
A goldfinch's nest in a blackberry bush ! That was 
a climax of surprises, in very truth. 

On the same day, not far distant, another bush- 
sparrow's nest was found in some bushes, placed 
about three feet from the ground. In a few weeks 
there were babies fiwQ in the goldfinch's nest, and 
four in that of the bush-sparrow. Pray keep both 
nests in mind, remembering that the youngsters of 
both famines were hatched on the same day. One 
evening at twilight I again stepped out to the clover- 
field. The mother goldfinch was sitting close on her 
nest, and did not stir as I came near. Then I 
touched her lightly with my cane. Still she remained 



io6 



IN BIRD LAND. 



on her nest as if glued fast, only glaring at me with 
her wild, beady eyes. At length I softly laid my 
finger on her back, when she uttered a queer, half- 
scolding cry, and leaped up to the nest's rim, but 
did not fly. There she stood, turning her head and 
eying me keenly until I stole away, unwilling to for- 
feit her confidence and good-will. But when, on 
my way home, I paused a moment to look at the 
bush-sparrow's nest, the mother flitted away with a 
frightened chirp before I came within reach. She 
was not as confiding as her little neighbor, the 
goldfinch. 

Now mark ! On the fifteenth of August the young 
bush-sparrows had become so large and well devel- 
oped that when, meaning no harm, I touched them 
gently with my finger, they flipped out of the nest 
like flashes of hghtning. The infant goldfinches 
were not yet more than half fledged, and merely 
snuggled close to the bottom of the nest when I 
caressed them. The idea of flying was still remote 
from their little pates. These observations prove 
that young bush-sparrows develop much more rap- 
idly than young goldfinches ; yet, strange as it may 
seem, the goldfinch, when grown, flies much higher, 
if not more swiftly, than his little neighbor, and 
continues longer on the wing. 

On the same day I sat down in the clover, a few 
rods from the goldfinch's nest, and kept close watch 
on both the old birds and their offspring for an hour 
and a half. The sun attacked me savagely with 
his red-hot arrows, and the sweat broke from every 



NEST-HUNTING. 1 07 

pore, but I felt amply repaid for my vigil. During 
the first half-hour the parent birds ventured slyly to 
feed their bantlings twice. Then I crept closer, 
and waited an hour j but the parent birds were too 
shy to bring their hungry nestlings a single mouth- 
ful of food, choosing, it would seem, to let them suf- 
fer hunger rather than take risk themselves. The 
little things were almost famished, and behaved very 
quaintly. Every rustle of the leaves in the wind 
caused them to start up, crane out their necks, pry 
open their mouths as wide as they could, waddle 
awkwardly from side to side, and chirp for some- 
thing to eat. How famished they were ! They 
even seized one another's heads and tried to gulp 
one another down. The spectacle was just a little 
uncanny. 

But, dear me ! they were not as ignorant of the 
ways of the world as you might suppose. When I 
lightly tapped the stems of the bushes with my cane, 
instead of' leaping up and opening their mouths as 
they were expected to do, they shrank down into 
the bottom of the nest, discerning at once the dif- 
ference between those strokes on the bush and their 
parents' quiet approach or loving call. Something 
must have put them on their guard, and instilled 
feelings of fear into their palpitating bosoms. Per- 
haps it was that shy personage, the mother herself; 
for she would call admonishingly at intervals from 
the woods, Ba-bie ! ba-bie ! putting a pathetic 
accent on the second syllable. It was droll to see 



I08 IN BIRD LAND, 

the youngsters try to preen their feathers, they went 
about the performance so awkwardly. 

On the seventeenth of the month one of the nest- 
lings was missing, and no amount of looking for it 
in the thicket revealed any clew to its whereabouts. 
None of the remaining birds were ready to fly. 
Two days later they were still in the nest, although 
they had grown considerably since my last visit, so 
that one of them was almost crowded out of the 
circular trundle-bed. • I could not resist the temp- 
tation to lift it in my hand, just to see how pretty 
it was and how it would act. It uttered a sharp 
cry of alarm, and sprang from my hand ; but its 
wings were still so weak that it merely fluttered in 
an oblique direction to the ground. The third time 
I caught it, it sat contentedly on my palm, and 
allowed me to stroke its back, looking up at its 
captor with mingled wonder and trustfulness. 

On the heads of all the nestlings a fine down pro- 
truded up through and above the feathers. The 
birds looked very knowingly out of their small coal- 
black eyes, but the cunning little things obstinately 
refused to open their mouths for me, entice them 
as I would; however, when I moved away some 
distance, and their mamma came with a tempting 
morsel, they sprang up instantly and gulped it down. 
Not so very unsophisticated, after all, for mere bant- 
lings ! On the morning of the twenty-sixth all the 
young finches had left the nest, and were perched in 
the bushes near by. I contrived to catch one of them 



NEST-HUNTING. IO9 

and hold him in my hand a few moments, to admire 
his dainty toilet and pretty dark eyes. Thus my 
brief study in comparative ornithology proved that 
the young goldfinches left the nest seven days after 
the young bush- sparrows, hatched at the same time, 
had taken wing. 



no IN BIRD LAND, 



IX. 

MIDSUMMER MELODIES. 

SEVERAL times has the statement been made 
in print that it is scarcely worth one's while 
to attempt to study the birds during the midsummer 
months, the reason alleged being that at that time 
they are silent and inactive, and their behavior 
devoid of special interest. Now, nothing ministers 
so gratefully to the pride of the original investigator 
as to prove untrue the theories that have been 
advanced in books and that are current among 
scientific men. During the summer of 1891 I re- 
solved to discover for myself what the birds were 
doing, and so, spite of drought, heat, and mosqui- 
toes, I visited the haunts of my winged companions 
at least every other day. The result was a surprise 
to myself, proving that the unwisest thing a natu- 
ralist can do is to lay down absolute canons of 
conduct for feathered folk. 

It is just possible that physical stupor, induced 
by the extreme heat of summer, has caused some 
ornithologists to observe carelessly and listlessly, 
and for that reason they have supposed that the 
birds were as languid as themselves ; but the wide- 
awake student, who can brave heat and cold alike, 
will never find the feathered creation failing to 



MIDSUMMER MELODIES. Ill 

repay the closest attention. Some birds are almost 
as active when the mercury is wrestling with the 
nineties as on the fairest day of May, and those 
are the ones to be studied in midsummer. 

My special investigations began about the middle 
of July. It is true that at that time what are usually 
regarded as the songsters of the first class — the 
brown thrashers, wood-thrushes, cat-birds, and bobo- 
Knks — had gone into a conspiracy of silence, not 
a musical note coming from their throats, although 
some of them always remain in this latitude until 
far into September. But when the first-class min- 
strels are mute, one appreciates the minor vocalists 
all the more. Yet I must not omit to say that on 
the thirtieth of July I caught a fragment of a wood- 
thrush's song, the last I heard for the season. 

Let me recall one day in particular. It was the 
tenth of August, and the weather was broiling, — hot 
enough to drive the thermometer into hysterics, 
just the day to see how the heat would affect the 
feathered tenants of the groves ; and so, overcoming 
my physical inertia as best I could, I stalked to 
the woods in the afternoon in quest of bird lore. 
With the perspiration running from every pore, I 
trudged about for some time without seeing or hear- 
ing a single bird. Were the books correct, after all? 
Was I to be deprived of the pleasure of proving 
them in error? It began to appear as if such 
might be the case. Presently, however, as I pushed 
out into a gap at one side of the woods, an uneasy 
chirping in the clumps of bushes and brambles near 



112 IN BIRD LAND. 

by sent a thrill of gladness through my veins. I felt 
intuitively that there were birds in abundance in the 
neighborhood, and my presentiment proved correct ; 
for before my brief search was completed, I was 
permitted to record the songs of the indigo-bird, 
the cardinal grossbeak, the towhee bunting, the 
wood-pewee, the Baltimore oriole, and the black- 
capped chickadee ; while, no sooner had I stepped 
out of the woods into the adjoining swamp, than 
the song-sparrow chimed merrily, '' Oh, certainly, 
certainly, you must n't forget me-me-me ! No-sirree, 
no-sirree ! " 

One of the most blithesome trillers of midsummer 
was the grass-finch, which sang his canticles until 
about the twelfth of August, when he suddenly took 
leave for parts unknown. It seemed to me he sang 
more vigorously in July than in May, for several 
times he prolonged his trill with such splendid 
musical effect as to make me rush out to the adjoin- 
ing field to find a lark-sparrow. The black-throated 
bunting remained here almost as long, rasping his 
harsh notes until he also took his flight. I was 
somewhat disappointed in the meadow-larks, having 
heard but one note from their tuneful throats during 
August ; but when September came, they resumed 
their shrill choruses, which lasted until November, 
increasing in vigor as the autumn advanced. 

The robins were chary of their music, only two 
songs having been heard during August, one of 
them on the fourteenth. But the little bush-sparrow 
made ample compensation, chanting his pensive 



MIDSUMMER MELODIES. 1 13 

voluntaries almost every: day at the border of the 
woods until about the twentieth of August. Still 
more lavish of his melody was the indigo-bird, which 
on several occasions was the only songster, besides 
the wood-pewee, heard during a long stroll through 
the woods. An irrepressible minstrel, he is the most 
cheery member of the midsummer chorus. My 
notes say that the Maryland yellow-throat was sing- 
ing in splendid voice on the first of August, but I 
am positive I heard him later in the month, as he 
is one of our most rolHcksome midsummer chorahsts. 
The goldfinch sang cheerily on the first, eighteenth, 
and nineteenth of August, and I cannot say how 
often in July and August I heard the loud refrain 
of the Carolina wren. 

On the tenth, twelfth, fourteenth, eighteenth, 
and nineteenth of August, the Baltimore oriole piped 
cheerily, though he had partly doffed his splendid 
vernal robes, and was beginning to don his modest 
autumnal garb. The cardinal bird fluted frequently 
during July and August, and, besides, regaled me 
with a vocal performance on the third of September. 
The last record I have of the towhee bunting's 
trill is the tenth of August; but before that date 
he was quite lavish of his music. On many of 
my tramps to the woods the sad minor whistle of 
the black-capped chickadee pierced the solitudes, 
making one dream of one's boyhood days, — 

" When birds and flowers and I were happy peers," 

as Lowell would phrase it. 

8 



114 ^^ ^^^^ LAND. 

One of my surprises was a warbler's trill on the 
twelfth of August. The little tantalizer kept itself 
so far up in the trees as to baffle all attempts at 
identification, but I am disposed to think it was a 
cerulean warbler. On the nineteenth of August two 
warbler trills, one of them, I feel almost sure, from 
the throat of the chestnut-sided warbler, were heard, 
which is all the more novel because these birds are 
not residents, but only migrants in this latitude. I 
should have felt amply repaid for all my efforts, had 
I proved nothing more than that warblers will some- 
times regale one with an aftermath of song in the 
dog days. 

The most persistent minstrel of the midsummer 
orchestra was the wood-pewee, — the only bird 
whose song I heard on every excursion to the woods 
diiring July and August ; and even when September 
came, there seemed to be little abatement in his 
musical industry. All the year round, the song- 
sparrow is the most prolific lyrist of my acquain- 
tance, but in midsummer he is distanced by his 
sylvan neighbor, the wood-pewee. During my walks 
on the twenty-ninth and thirty-first of August 
the pewee's was the only song heard. 

Then, he does not confine himself wholly to 
his ordinary song, Phe-e-w-e-e or Phe-e-e-o-r-e-e-e, 
for one day in July he twittered a quaint med- 
ley in a low, caressing tone, as if singing a lullaby 
to his nestlings. At first I could not tell what 
bird was the author of the new style of melody, but 
presently the song glided sweetly into the well-known 



MIDSUMMER MELODIES. 1 15 

Fe-e-w-e-e, On another occasion I was charmed by 
the vocal rehearsals of a young pewee. His youth 
was evident from the fact that he twinkled his wings 
and coaxed for food from the mother bird, who re- 
warded his vocal efforts by feeding him. The song 
was extremely beautiful, spite of the crudeness of its 
execution ; a clear continuous strain, repeated quite 
loudly, with here and there a partially successful at- 
tempt to emit the ordinary pewee notes. Occasion- 
ally the parent bird would respond, as if setting the 
ambitious novice a musical copy, and then he would 
make a heroic effort to pipe the notes he had just 
heard, and several times he succeeded admirably. 
He had a voice of excellent quality, but did not 
have it under perfect control ; still, the immature 
song was so innocent, so naive and striking, that it 
was a temptation to wish he would never learn to 
sing otherwise. 

Permit me to add, in conclusion, that, while the 
birds are not equally musical or plentiful all the year 
round, yet there is never a time when their behavior 
is not worth careful attention. Moreover, midsum- 
mer is the most favorable time for the study of the 
quaint behavior and varied plumage of young birds, 
— a theme connected with our avian fauna that 
merits more consideration than it has yet received. 



Il6 IN BIRD LAND. 



X. 

WHERE BIRDS ROOST. 

ONE winter evening found me tramping through 
a swamp not far from my home, listening 
to the dulcet trills of the song- sparrows, which had 
recently returned from a brief visit to a more south- 
ern latitude. There was no snow on the ground, 
and the day had been pleasant; but, as evening 
approached, the west wind blew raw across the 
fields. For some reason which I cannot now re- 
call, an impulse seized me to clamber over the 
fence into the adjacent meadow, where I stalked 
about somewhat aimlessly for a minute or two, little 
thinking that I was on the eve of a discovery, — one 
that was destined to lead me into a delightful field 
of investigation. 

The ground was rather soggy, but a pair of tall 
rubber boots make one indifferent to mire and 
mud. The dusk was now gathering rapidly, and 
it was time for most birds to go to bed. I soon 
found, too, that they were going to bed, and, more- 
over, were taking lodgings in the most unexpected 
quarters. Imagine my surprise when, as I trudged 
about, the little tree-sparrows, which are winter 



WHERE BIRDS ROOST. ny 

residents in my neighborhood, flew up here and 
there out of the deep grass. They seemed to be 
hidden somewhere until I came near, and then they 
would suddenly dart up as if they had emerged from 
a hole in the ground. 

This unexpected behavior led me to investigate ; 
and I soon found that in many places there were 
cosey apartments hollowed out under the long, thick 
tufts of marsh grass, with neat entrances at one side 
like the door of an Eskimo hut. These hollows 
gave ample evidence of having been occupied by 
the birds, so that there could be no doubt about 
their being bird bedrooms. Very frequently they 
were burrowed in the sides of the mounds of sod 
raised by the winter frosts, and were thus lifted 
above the intervening hollows, which contained ice- 
cold water. In every case the overhanging grass 
made a thatched roof to carry off the rain. 

I do not mean to say that these little dugouts 
were made by the birds themselves. Perhaps they 
were, but it is more probable that they had been 
scooped out the previous summer by field-mice, and 
had only been appropriated for sleeping-apartments 
by the sparrows. However that may be, they were 
exceedingly cunning and cosey ; and soft must have 
been the slumbers of the feathered occupants while 
the wintry blasts howled unharming above them. 

Prior to that discovery I had supposed, with most 
people, that all birds roost in trees and bushes. 
Later researches have proved how wide of the truth 
one's unverified hypotheses may be. A week or so 



1 1 8 IN BIRD LAND. 

afterward, while strolling one evening at dusk 
through a favorite timber-belt, I noticed the snow- 
birds, or juncos, darting up from the leaves and 
bushes and small brush-heaps, beneath which they 
had found dainty Httle coverts from the storm. In 
many places crooked twigs and branches, covered 
with leaves, lay on the ground, leaving underneath 
small spaces overarched and sheltered, and into 
these cosey nooks the juncos had crept for the 
night. No enemies, at least in winter, would find 
them there, and their hiding-places were snug and 
warm. Long after dark I lingered in the woods, 
and everywhere startled the snow-birds from their 
leafy couches. At one place a whole colony of 
them had taken lodgings. When my passing fright- 
ened them away, they flew through the darkness 
into the neighboring trees. After waiting at some 
distance for several minutes, I returned to the spot, 
and found that some of the birds had gone back 
to their bedrooms on the ground. 

In my nocturnal prowlings through the fields and 
lowlands, I have frequently frightened the meadow- 
larks from the grass, and that long before nest-build- 
ing or incubation had begun. Of course, they were 
recognized by their nervous alarm-calls, as well as by 
the peculiar sound of their fluttering wings. What 
surprises me beyond measure is that they so often 
select low, boggy places for their roosts, instead of 
the dry pleasant upland slopes. But there is no 
accounting for tastes in the bird world. The grass- 
finches and lark- sparrows, like their relatives just 



WHERE BIRDS ROOST. 1 19 

mentioned, seek little hollows in the ground for 
bed-chambers, usually sheltered by grass tufts. 

Long before day, one April morning, I made my 
way to the marsh so frequently mentioned in this 
volume. The moon was shining brightly in the 
southern sky. Early as it was — for as yet there 
was no sign of daybreak — the silvery trills of the 
song-sparrows rose from the bushes like a votive 
offering to the Queen of Night. From one part of 
the swamp a sweet song would ring out on the 
moonlit air, and would at once be taken up by an- 
other songster not far away. Then another would 
chime in, and another, until the whole enclosure 
was filled with the antiphonal melody. A silence 
would then fall upon the marsh like a dream-spirit, 
to be broken soon by another outburst of min- 
strelsy ; and thus the nocturne continued until day 
broke, and it merged into the glad matin service. 

But my object is to tell about bird roosts rather 
than about bird music. When I reached the 
farther end of the marsh, several sparrow songs 
came up from the ground. I walked with a ten- 
tative purpose toward a spot whence a song came, 
when the little triller sprang up affrighted. The 
same experiment with a number of other songsters 
brought a like result in each case, proving beyond 
doubt, I think, that at least some of the song- 
sparrows roost on the ground, and begin their 
matins before they rise from their couches, so 
anxious are they to put in a full day of song. 

On the same morning — it was still before day- 



I20 IN BIRD LAND. 

break — a bevy of red-wiiiged blackbirds, which 
had been roosting in the long grass, flew up with 
vociferous cries and protests at the rude awakening 
I had given them, just when they were enjoying 
their morning nap. Blame them who will for 
making loud ado, for there are many people who 
would do the same under similar provocation. 
Thus it will be seen that many birds sleep on the 
ground. My investigations lead me to this con- 
clusion : As a rule, those birds which nest on or 
near the ground, and spend a considerable portion 
of their time in the grass, like the meadow-larks 
and song- sparrows, roost on the ground, while 
others find bushes and trees more to their taste. 
Still, there are exceptions to this rule ; for on several 
occasions, while bent on my nocturnal prowlings, 
I have driven the turtle-dove from the ground, 
although this bird usually roosts in the thorn-trees 
and willows.^ 

The robins choose thick trees and even wild rose- 
bushes for roosts. In the apple-trees and pines of 
a neighbor's yard across the fields these birds find 
sleeping-apartments early in the spring, before 
nest-building is begun, for a perfect deluge of 
robin music often pours from that locality, both 
morning and evening. 

The white-throats, wood-sparrows, and brown 
thrashers make use of the thick thorn-trees of the 
marsh for lodgings. They flutter about in sore 

1 This is, after all, no exception, for I have since found a 
number of turtle-doves' nests on the ground. 



WHERE BIRDS ROOST, 121 

dismay as I approach, until I start back, lest they 
should impale themselves on the sharp thorns. 
Sometimes the thrasher ensconces himself for the 
night in the brush-heaps which the wood-choppers 
have made on the slopes, making his presence 
known by his peculiar way of scolding at my offi- 
cious intrusion. 

One cannot help admiring the wise forethought 
displayed by many birds in creeping into the thick 
thorn-bushes at night, where they may sleep without 
fear of attack from their nocturnal foe, the owl. 
Full well they seem to know he cannot force his 
bulky form through the thick network of branch 
and thorn. How he must gnash his teeth with 
rage — if owls ever do that — when he espies his 
coveted prey sleeping peacefully just beyond the 
reach of his talons ! Still, it sometimes happens 
that even a small bird ventures into too close 
quarters in these terrible prickly bushes ; for I once 
found a dead sparrow completely wedged in among 
the fierce thorns, where it had evidently been 
caught in such a way as to prevent its escape. 

Something over a year after the preceding facts 
were published, I was seized with a whim to re- 
sume my investigations on bird roosts. One of my 
nocturnal rambles seems to be deserving of some- 
what minute description. It was a delightful 
evening of early spring, with a warm westerly 
breeze stirring the bursting leaves. The sun had 
set, and the dusk was falling over fields and woods. 
The bright moon, a little more than half full. 



122 IN BIRD LAND, 

lengthened out the gloaming and added many 
precious minutes to the singing hours of the birds. 
Such a woodland chorus as I was permitted to 
listen to that evening 1 It wa-s a rare privilege. 
How the wood-thrushes vied with the towhee 
buntings ! Which would sing the latest ? That 
seemed to be the question. At length there were 
several moments of silence, and I supposed all the 
birds had gone to sleep, when a white-throated 
sparrow and a wood-pewee struck in with their 
sweet strains ; and so the chorus continued until 
it was really night. The wood-thrushes, I think, 
got in the last note of the twilight serenade. 

Before it had become quite dark, I espied a 
wood-thrush sitting in the fork of a dogwood-tree, 
looking at me in a startled way ; but she did not 
fly. I walked off some distance, remained awhile, 
and then returned, to find her still in her place. 
Then I strolled about until night had fully come ; 
the moon shone brightly, so that it was not dark. 
When I went back to the dogwood-tree, the 
speckled breast of the thrush was still visible in 
the fork which she had chosen for her bed-chamber, 
and I wished her pleasant dreams. 

While stalking about, I startled another wood- 
thrush, which had selected a loose brush-heap on 
the ground instead of a sapling or tree for a roost. 
The indigo -birds and bush- sparrows flew up from 
the blackberry bushes as I pushed my way through 
them. Several times the towhee buntings leaped 
scolding out of bed, having selected brush-heaps, 



WHERE BIRDS ROOST. 123 

or dead branches lying on the ground, for roost- 
ing-places. 

A discovery was also made in regard to the 
sleeping-apartments of the red-headed woodpecker. 
As the dusk was gathering, a red- head dashed in front 
of me into the border of the woods, alighting on 
a sapling stem, and then began to shuffle upward 
toward a hole plainly visible from where I sat ; but 
just as he reached the hole, another red-head 
appeared with a challenging air on the inside of 
the cavity, and red-head number one darted away 
with a cry of alarm. Now was my time to discover, 
if possible, where red-head number two would roost. 
So I kept a close watch on the cavity, waiting about, 
as previously said, until nightfall, and then, keeping 
my eye on the hole, so that the bird could not fly 
out without being seen, I made my way to the sap- 
ling. Intently watching the hole with my glass, I 
tapped the stem of the tree with my heel, when, in 
the moonlight, a red head and long, black beak 
were protruded from the opening above. The wood- 
pecker was within, that much was proved ; and when 
I had beaten against the tree, he had sprung up to 
the orifice to see who was thus impolitely disturbing 
his evening slumbers. He turned his head sidewise, 
and looked down at me with his keen beady eyes ; 
but although I tapped against the tree again and 
again, he would not leave the cavity. There can be 
no doubt that it was his bedroom, — that cosey apart- 
ment in the sapling, — for it was still too early in 
the season for the bird to begin nesting, as he had 



124 IN BIRD LAND, 

arrived only two or three days before from his winter 
residence in the south. Very likely most wood- 
peckers roost in the cavities which they hew in trees, 
for I do not see why the one into whose private 
affairs I pried that evening should have been an 
exception. He most probably was only following 
the customs of his tribe from time immemorial.^ 

A number of experiments made with young birds 
purloined from the nest — I must beg the feathered 
parents' forgiveness — have added several interesting 
facts to the subject in hand. One spring I became 
guardian, purveyor, and man- of- all- work to a pair of 
young flickers, taken from a cavity in an old apple- 
tree. They were kept in a large cage, in which I 
placed sapling boughs of considerable size. They 
had not become my proteges many days before they 
insisted on converting these upright branches into 
sleeping-couches, clinging to the vertical boles with 
their stout claws, and pillowing their heads in the 
feathers of their backs. In this position they slept 
as comfortably as the thrushes and orioles confined 
in other cages slept on their horizontal perches, or, 
for that matter, as I slept in my own bed. They 

1 The reader will see, from the facts given in the remainder 
of the chapter, that I reckoned without my host in supposing 
that woodpeckers usually sleep in cavities of trees. That they 
sometimes select such places for roosts cannot be doubted; 
but that such is always or even generally their habit the ex- 
periments described farther on conclusively disprove. It is 
only fair to say that the rest of the chapter was added long 
after the foregoing had been written, and proves how unsafe 
it is for the naturalist to make generalizations. 



WHERE BIRDS ROOST. 125 

even slept on the under- side of an oblique branch. 
One of them passed one night on a horizontal perch, 
although apparently his slumbers were not quite so 
sound and refreshing as they would have been had 
he roosted in the wonted upright position. Queerest 
of all, these woodpeckers sometimes selected the 
side of the cage itself for a roosting-place, thrusting 
their claws into the crevice between the door and 
its frame. Wherever they roosted, their tails were 
made to do duty as braces, by being pressed tightly 
against the wall to which they clung. A pair of 
young red-headed woodpeckers behaved in much 
the same way, always preferring to sleep on an 
upright perch. 

During the spring of 1893 I placed in a cage the 
following birds, all taken while in a half-callow state, 
from the nest : Two cat-birds, one red-winged black- 
bird, one cow-bunting, and two meadow-larks. In 
a few days all of them proclaimed their species, as 
well as the inexorable law of heredity, by selecting 
such roosts as were best adapted to them, and that 
without any instruction whatever from adult birds. 
The meadow-larks almost invariably squatted on the 
grass with which the floor of the cage was lined, 
usually scratching and waddling from side to side 
until they had made cosey hollows to fit their bodies ; 
while the remaining inmates flew up to the perches 
when bed-time came. 

It was quite interesting to look in upon my group 
of sleeping pets of an evening, part of them roosting 
in the lower story of the cage and the rest in the 



126 IN BIRD LAND, 

upper story. Several times, however, one of the larks 
slept on a perch, and the red-wing, after the cat-birds 
and bunting had been removed from the cage, occa- 
sionally seemed to think the upstairs a little lonely, 
and so he cuddled down on the grass below, edging 
up close to the larks. The strangely assorted bed- 
fellows slept together in this way like happy 
children. 



THE WOOD-PEWEE, 127 



XL 

THE WOOD-PEWEE. 

A MONOGRAPH. 

ALMOST every person living in the country or 
the suburbs of a town is familiar with the 
house-pewee, or phoebe-bird. It is usually looked 
upon as the sure harbinger of spring. In my boy- 
hood days my parents and grandparents were wont 
to say, " Spring is here ; the phoebe is singing." 
And if blithesomeness of tone and good cheer have 
anything to do with the advent of the season of 
song and bursting blossoms, the pewit, as he is 
often called, must be a true herald and prophet. 
He seems to carry the ^^ subtle essence of spring** 
in his tuneful larynx, and in the graceful sweep of 
his flight as he pounces upon an insect. It is quite 
easy to make the transition from his familiar song of 
Phe-e-by to the exclamation, Spidng 's he?'e ! by a 
little stretch of the fancy. 

But the phoebe has a woodland relative, a first 
cousin, with which most persons are not so well 
acquainted, because he is more retiring in his habits, 
and seeks out-of-the-way places for his habitat. I 
refer to the wood-pewee. If your eyes and ears are 
not so sharp as they should be, you may get these 



128 IN BIRD LAND. 

two birds confounded; yet there is no need of 
making such a blunder. The woodland bird is 
smaller, slenderer, and of a darker cast than his 
relative ; and, besides, there is a marked difference 
in the musical performances of these birds. The 
song of the phoebe is sprightly and cheerful, and 
the syllables are uttered rather quickly, while the 
whistle of the wood-pewee is softer and more plain- 
tive, and is repeated with less emphasis and more 
deliberation. There is, indeed, something inex- 
pressibly sad and dreamy about the strain of the 
wood-pewee, especially if heard at a distance in the 
*^ emerald twilight" of the '^ woodland privacies." 
Mr. Lowell seldom erred in his attempts to charac- 
terize the songs and habits of the birds, but in his 
exquisite poem entitled ^^ Phoebe" he certainly 
must have referred to the wood-pewee and not to 
the phcebe-bird, as his description applies to the 
former but not to the latter. He calls this bird 
*^the loneliest of its kind," while the pewit is a 
famihar species about many a country home. Tak- 
ing it for granted that he meant the wood-pewee, 
how happy is his description ! 

" It is a wee sad-colored thing, 
As shy and secret as a maid, 
That ere in choir the robins ring, 
Pipes its own name like one afraid. 

" It seems pain-prompted to repeat 
The story of some ancient ill, 
But Phcebe I Phcebe ! sadly sweet, 
Is all it says, and then is still. 



THE WOOD-PEWEE. 129 

*^ Fkcrbe ! it calls and calls again; 

And Ovid, could he but have heard, 
Had hung a legendary pain 
About the memory of the bird. 



" Phcebe ! is all it has to say 

In plaintive cadence o'er and o'er, 
Like children who have lost their way. 

And know their names, but nothing more." 

This poetical tribute is certainly very graceful, 
and would be true to life if the phonetic represen- 
tation were a little more accurate. Instead of 
Fhoebe, imagine the song to be Pe-e-w-e-e-e or Phe- 
e-w-e-e-e^ and you will gain a clear idea of the min- 
strelsy of this songster of the wild wood. However, 
he frequently varies his tune, — to prevent its 
becoming monotonous, I opine. He sometimes 
closes his refrain with the falling inflection or cir- 
cumflex, and sometimes with the rising, as the mood 
prompts him. In the former case the first syllable 
receives the greater emphasis and is the more pro- 
longed, and in the latter this order is precisely 
reversed. When the last syllable is uttered with the 
rising circumflex, it is usually, if not always, cut ofl" 
somewhat abruptly. Moreover, this minstrel often 
runs the two syllables of his song together, — a pecu- 
liarity that I have represented in my notes, taken 
while listening to the song, in this way : Phe-e-e-o- 
o-w-e-e-e ! There is a characteristic swing about 
the melody that refuses to be caught in the mesh 
of letters and syllables. 

In some of the pewee's vocal efforts he does not 
9 



130 IN BIRD LAND. 

get farther than the end of the first syllable. The 
song seems to be cut off short, as if the notes had 
stuck fast in the singer's throat, or as if something 
had occurred to divert his mind from the song. 
Perhaps this hiatus is caused by the sudden appear- 
ance of an insect glancing by, which attracts the 
musician's attention. This bird usually chooses a 
dead twig or limb in the woods as a perch, on which 
he sits and sings, turning his head from side to side, 
so that no flitting moth may escape him. 

And what a persistent singer he is ! He sings 
not only in the spring when other vocalists are in 
full tune, but also all summer long, never growing 
disheartened, even when the mercury rises far up 
into the nineties. What a pleasant companion he 
has been in my midsummer strolls as I have wearily 
patrolled the woods ! On the sultriest August days, 
when all other birds were glad to keep mute, sitting 
on their shady perches with open mandibles and 
drooping wings, the dreamful, far-away strain of 
the wood-pewee has drifted, a welcome sound, to 
my ears through the dim aisles. He seems to be a 
friend in need. How often, when the heat has 
almost overcome me, as I pursued my daily beat, 
that song has put new vigor into my veins ! When 
Mr. Lowell wrote that 

"The phoebe scarce whistles 
Once an hour to his fellow,'* 

he must have been listening to a far lazier specimen 
than those with which I am acquainted. 



THE WOOD-PEWEE. 131 

Most birds fall occasionally into a kind of ecstasy 
of song, and the wood-pewee is no exception. One 
evening, after it had grown almost dark, a pewee 
flew out into the air directly above my head from 
a tree by the wayside, and began to sing in a per- 
fect transport as he wheeled about ; then he swung 
back into the tree, keeping up his song in a con- 
tinuous strain, and in sweet, half- caressing tones, 
until finally it died away, as if the bird had fallen 
into a doze during his vocal recital. I lingered 
about for some time, but he did not sing again. 
Why should he repeat his good-night song? 

I have frequently heard young pewees in mid- 
summer singing in a continuous way, instead of 
whistling the intermittent song of their elders. It 
sounds very droll, giving you the impression that 
the little neophyte has begun to turn the crank of 
his music-box and can't stop. His voice is quite 
sweet, but his execution is very crude. Wait, 
however, until he is eight or nine months older, 
and he will show you what a winged Orpheus can 
do. My notes say that on the thirtieth of July, 
189 1, 1 heard a " pewee's quaint, prolonged whistle, 
interlarded with his ordinary notes." Thus it will 
be seen that he is a somewhat versatile songster, 
proving the poet's lines half true and half untrue : — 

'* The birds but repeat without ending 
The same old traditional notes, 
Which some, by more happily blending, 
Seem to make over new in their throats." 



132 



IN BIRD LAND. 



Younger readers may, perhaps, need to be in- 
formed that the wood-pewee belongs to the family 
of flycatchers, as do also the king-bird or bee- 
martin, the phoebe-bird, the great-crested fly- 
catcher, and a number of other interesting species, 
all of which have a peculiar way of taking their 
prey. The pewee will sit almost motionless on a 
twig, lisping his plaintive tune at intervals, until a 
luckless insect comes buzzing near, all unconscious 
of its peril, when the bird will make a quick dash 
at it, seize it dexterously between his mandibles, 
and then circle around gracefully to the same or 
another perch, having made a splendid ** catch on 
the fly." If the quarry he has taken is small, it 
slips at once down his throat ; but should it be 
too large to be disposed of in that summary way, 
he will beat it into an edible form upon a limb 
before gulping it down. Agile as he is, he some- 
timxCs misses his aim, being compelled to make a 
second, and occasionally even a third attempt to 
secure his prize. I have witnessed more than one 
comedy which turned out to be a tragedy for the 
ill-starred insect. Sometimes the insect will resort 
to the ruse of dropping toward the ground when it 
sees the bird darting toward it, and then a scuffle 
ensues that is really laughable, the pursuer whirl- 
ing, tumbling, almost turning somersault in his 
desperate efforts to capture his prize. Once an 
insect flew between me and a pewee perched on a 
twig, when the bird darted down toward me with 
a directness of aim that made me think for a 



* THE WOOD-PEWEE, 133 

moment he would fly Tight into my face ; but he 
made a dexterous turn in time, caught his quarry, 
and swung to a bough near by. If one were dis- 
posed to be speculative, one might well raise 
Sidney Lanier's pregnant inquiry at this point, 
the reference being to the southern mocking-bird, 
and not to our pewee, — 

" How may the death of that dull insect be 
The life of yon trim Shakspeare, on the tree ? " 

It has been my good fortune to find one, but 
only one, nest of this bird. It was placed on a 
horizontal branch about fifteen feet above the 
ground, and was a neat, compact structure, deco- 
rated on the outside with grayish lichens and moss, 
giving it the appearance of an excrescence on the 
limb.-^ It is said by those who have closely exam- 
ined the nests, that they are handsomely built and 
ornamented, and are equalled only by the dainty 
houses of the humming-bird and the blue-gray 
gnat-catcher. The eggs, usually four in number, 
are of a creamy white hue, beautifully embellished 
with a wreath of lavender and purplish-brown 
around the larger end or near the centre. 

Though our bird prefers solitary places for his 
home, he is far from shy, if you call on him in his 
haunt in the wildwood. He will sit fearless on 
his perch, even if you come quite near, looking at 

^ Since this was written, I have found several more nests, 
and have even watched the skilful architects at their house- 
building. 



134 ^^ ^IRD LAND, 

you in his staid, philosophical way, as if you were 
scarcely worth noticing. Nor will he hush his song 
at your approach, although he does not seem to 
care whether you listen to him or not. It is 
seldom that he can be betrayed into doing an 
undignified act ; and even if he does almost turn a 
somersault in pursuing a refractory miller, he re- 
covers his poise the next moment, and settles upon 
his perch with as much sang /raid as if nothing 
unusual had occurred. Altogether, the wood-pewee 
is what Bradford Torrey would call a '^ character in 
feathers/' 



A PAIR OF NIGHT-HAWKS, 



^35 



XII. 

A PAIR OF NIGHT-HAWKS. 

THE night-hawk and the whippoorwill are often 
confounded by persons of inaccurate habits of 
observation. It is true, both birds are members of 
the goatsucker family; but they belong to entirely 
different genera, and are therefore of much more 
distant kin than many people suppose. The whip- 
poorwill is a forest bird, while the night-hawk pre- 
fers the open country. Besides, the whippoorwill 
is decidedly nocturnal in his habits, making the 
woods ring at night, as every one knows, with his 
weird, flutehke melody ; whereas the night-hawk is 
a bird of the day and evening. Then, a peculiar 
mark of the night-hawk is the round white spot on 
his wings, visible on the under surface as he per- 
forms his wonderful feats overhead, — a mark that 
does not distinguish his woodland relative. 

As a rule, the gloaming is the favorite time for the 
night-hawk's wing- exercises ; then he may be seen 
whirling, curveting, mounting, and plunging, often at 
a dizzy height, gathering his supper of insects as he 
flies ; but his petulant call is often heard at other 
hours of the day, perhaps at noon when the sun is 
shining with fierce warmth. Even during a shower 



136 IN BIRD-LAND. 

he seems to be fond of haunting the cloudy canopy, 
toying with the wind. 

His call, as he tilts overhead, is difficult to repre- 
sent phonetically, both the vowels and consonants 
being provokingly elusive and hard to catch. To 
me he seems usually to say Spe-ah, Sometimes the S 
appears to be omitted, or is enunciated very slightly, 
while at other times his call seems to have a de- 
cidedly sibilant beginning. On several occasions he 
seemed to pronounce the syllable Scape, 

I had often watched the marvellous flight of these 
birds, as they passed like living silhouettes across 
the sky; but they had always seemed so shy and 
unapproachable that, prior to the summer of 189 1, 
I had despaired of ever finding a night-hawk's nest. 
However, one evening in June, while stalking about 
in the marsh, I suddenly became aware of a large 
bird fluttering uneasily about me in the gathering 
darkness. Presently it was joined by its mate, and 
then the two birds circled and hovered about, 
often coming into uncomfortable proximity with my 
head, and muttering under their breath. Chuckle I 
chuckle / Several times one of them alighted for a 
few moments on the rail-fence near by, and then 
resumed its circular flight. Even in the darkness I 
recognized that my uncanny companions were night- 
hawks, and felt convinced that there must be a nest 
in the neighborhood, or they would not display so 
much anxiety. It was too late to discover their 
secret that evening, and, besides, I really felt a slight 
chill creeping up my back, with those dark, ghostly 



A PAIR OF NIGHT-HAWKS, 137 

forms wheeling about- my head, and so I went 
reluctantly home. 

Two days later I found time to visit the marsh. 
On reaching the spot where the two birds had 
been seen, presto ! a dark feathered form started 
up before me from the ground. It was the female 
night-hawk ; and there on the damp earth, without 
the least trace of a nest or a covering of any kind, 
lay two eggs. At last I had found a night-hawk's 
nest ! The ground-color of the eggs, which were 
quite large, was of a dirty bluish-gray cast, mottled 
and clouded with darker gray and brown. 

The behavior of the mother bird was curious. 
She had fluttered away a few rods, pretending to 
be hurt, and then dropped into the grass. On my 
driving her from her hiding-place, she rose in the air 
and began to hover about above my head, and then, 
to my utter surprise, she swooped down toward me 
savagely, as if she really had a mind to attack me. 
As I walked away, she seemed to grow angrier and 
bolder, making a swift dash at me every few minutes, 
and actually coming so near my head as to cause 
me involuntarily to raise my cane in self-defence. 
A quaver of uneasiness went through me. I really 
believe she would have struck me had I given her 
sufficient provocation. There was a brisk shower 
falling at the time, and so, fearing the eggs might 
become addled, I hurried to the remote end of the 
marsh. Suddenly my feathered pursuer disappeared. 
Wondering if she had resumed her place on the 
nest, I sauntered back to settle the doubt, but pres- 



138 IN BIRD LAND, 

ently espied her sitting lengthwise on a top rail of 
the fence, while her eggs lay unprotected in the rain. 
Her dark, mottled form and sleepy, half-closed eyes 
made a quaint picture. I slowly withdrev/, and as 
long as I could see her with my glass, she kept her 
perch on the rail without moving a pinion. 

On the twenty-third of June another call was made 
on the night-hawk family, when I found two odd- 
looking bairns in the nest, if nest it could be called. 
They were covered with soft down, the black and 
white of which presented a wavy appearance. Their 
short, thick bills were covered with a speckled fuzz, 
except the tips. I stooped down and smoothed 
their downy backs with my hand, but there was no 
expression of fear in their sluggish eyes. 

Both parents were present on the twenty-sixth of 
June. For a while the male bird pursued his mate 
savagely through the air, as if venting on her his 
anger at my intrusion, and then, mounting far up 
toward the sky and poising a moment, he plunged 
toward the earth with a velocity that made my head 
dizzy, checking himself, as is his wont, with a loud 
resounding Bo-o-m-m, The female again pursued 
her unwelcome visitor, swooping so near my head 
two or three times that I could have reached her 
with my cane. The cock bird, curiously enough, 
never displayed so much courage, but kept at a 
safe distance. 

On the twenty-ninth the young birds had been 
moved about a half rod from the original site of the 
nest, and hopped off awkwardly into the grass when 



A PAIR OP NIGHT-HAWKS, 139 

I tried to clasp them with my hand. The benedict 
was absent this time, and was never seen on any of 
my subsequent visits while the young birds were 
fledging. By the first of July the bantlings hopped 
about in a lively manner at my approach to their 
domicile, and wheezed in a frightened way, spread- 
ing out their mottled pinions. On the seventh of 
July neither of the parents was to be seen, and the 
youngsters sat so cosily side by side on the ground 
that I had not the heart to disturb their slumbers. 
Approaching cautiously on the tenth, I almost 
stepped on the mother bird before she flew up. At 
the same moment both young birds started from the 
ground, and fluttered away in different directions on 
their untried wings, their flight being awkward and 
labored. A few weeks later four night-hawks were 
circling about above the marsh, — no doubt the 
family that had been affording me such an interesting 
study. What was my surprise when one of them 
resented my presence by swooping down toward me, 
as the female had done a few weeks before ! 

Reference has already been made incidentally to 
the night-hawk's curious habit of '' booming," as it is 
called. This sound is always produced as he plunges 
in an almost perpendicular course from a dizzy height, 
— or, more correctly, at the end of that headlong 
plunge, just as he sweeps around in a graceful 
curve. There is something almost sepulchral about 
the reverberating sound. How it is produced is a 
problem over which there has been no small amount 
of discussion in ornithological circles. But after 



I40 IN BIRD LAND. 

considerable study of this queer performance, I am 
persuaded that it is a vocal outburst, produced 
either for its musical effect (though it is far from 
musical), or else to give vent to the bird's exuber- 
ance of feeling as he makes his swift descent. 

His thick, curved bill seems admirably adapted 
to produce this sound, as do also his arched throat 
and neck. It has seemed to me, too, that his 
mandibles fly open at the moment the boom is 
heard, although I cannot be sure such is the case. 
Besides, the peculiar chuckle^ previously referred to, 
had about it a quality of sound suggestive of kin- 
ship with the bird's resounding boom. The hollow, 
wheezy alarm- call of the young birds, heard on 
several of my visits to the nest in the marsh, cor- 
roborates this theory. But there is still further proof 
that this hypothesis is correct. The night-hawk 
often makes his headlong plunge without booming at 
all, but merely utters his ordinary rasping, aerial call, 
which has been translated by the syllable Spe-ah, 
Then he sometimes combines the two calls, and on 
such occasions both of the sounds are uttered with 
a diminished loudness, as one would expect if both 
are vocal performances, but as one would not expect 
if the booming were made by the concussion of the 
bird's wings with the resisting air, as some orni- 
thologists suppose. The female sometimes booms, 
but her voice obviously lacks the strong, resounding 
quality that characterizes the voice of her liege lord. 



A BIRDS' GALA-DAY, 141 



I 



XIII. 

A BIRDS' GALA-DAY. 

N Mr. Emerson's poem entitled *^ May Morning " 
this stanza occurs : — 

" When the purple flame shoots up, 
And Love ascends the throne, 
I cannot hear your songs, O birds, 
For the witchery of my own." 

It would seem, therefore, that to be a poet does 
not always give one the coign of vantage in observ- 
ing Nature, but may, on the contrary, prove a 
positive disadvantage. Should the rambler go about 
" crooning rhymes " and making an over- sweet 
melody to himself, instead of keeping his ear alert 
to the music around him, he would be likely to miss 
many a wild, sweet song fully as enchanting as his 
own measured lines. No music of my own, how- 
ever, diverted my mind from Nature's blithe min- 
strels as, on the twenty-ninth of April, 1892, I 
pursued my avian studies in some of my favorite 
resorts. 

It was nine o'clock when I reached the quiet 
woodland lying beyond a couple of fields. The 
first fact noted was the return of a number of 
interesting migrants which had not been present 



142 IN BIRD LAND. 

on the preceding day. They had, as is their wont, 
come by night from some more southern rendezvous. 
Among them was the oven-bird or accentor, an- 
nouncing his presence with his startUng song, which 
at first seemed to come from a distance, but 
gradually drew nearer, like a voice walking toward 
me as it grew louder and more accelerated. On 
account of this quaint ventriloquial quality of voice, 
the little vocalist is often very difficult to find, and 
you are sure to look in a dozen places before you 
at last descry him. What a sedate genius he is, 
as he sits atilt on a twig, or walks in his leisurely 
fashion on the leaf-carpeted ground, looking up at 
you at intervals out of his sage, beady eyes. 

I have hinted that the oven-bird was first seen 
and then heard. In this respect the habits of 
different species of birds differ widely. The ac- 
centors, meadow-larks, orioles, bobolinks, Bewick's 
wrens, summer warblers, white-crowned sparrows, 
and some other species usually begin at once to 
celebrate with paeans their return to their old haunts ; 
whereas the wood-thrushes, brown thrashers, and 
white-throated sparrows seem to wait several days 
after their arrival before they tune their harps, — a 
diversity of behavior difficult to explain. Scarcely 
less inexplicable is the fact that some species arrive 
in scattered flocks, others in battalions and armies, 
and others still, one by one. My notes made on 
this day contain this statement : " Yesterday I heard 
a single call of the red-headed woodpecker ; to-day 
the woods are full of these birds." 



A BIRDS' GALA-DAY. 143 

On the first day of April the first Bewick's wren of 
the spring appeared, but, strange to say, not another 
wren was seen until near the end of the month. A 
single bird often goes ahead of the main body of 
migrants like a scout or outrider ; while not infre- 
quently a small company precedes the approach- 
ing army in the capacity, perhaps, of an advance 
guard. 

Threading my way through the "dim vistas, 
sprinkled o'er with sun-flecked green,'* to an open 
space near the border of the woods, I had the 
opportunity of listening to an improvised cat-bird 
concert, without a cent of charge for admission. 
Here some mental notes were made on the vocal 
qualities of this bird in comparison with those of 
the celebrated brown thrasher, and with some 
hesitancy I give my conclusions. Each songster 
has his special points of excellence. The thrasher 
has more voice volume than his rival, his technique 
is better, he glides more smoothly from one part 
of his song to another, and executes several runs 
that for pure melody and skill in rendering go 
beyond the cat-bird's ability ; but, on the other 
hand, it must be said that the latter minstrel's song 
contains fewer harsh, coarse, unmusical notes; his 
voice, on the whole, is of a finer quality, is pitched 
to a higher key, and his vocal performances are char- 
acterized by greater artlessness or naivete. Though 
professing to be no connoisseur, I have never felt so 
deeply stirred by the thrasher's as by the cat-bird's 
minstrelsy. There does not seem to be so much 



144 ^^'^ ^^^^ LAND, 

fervor and real passion in the vocal efforts of the 
tawny musician. 

A Httle farther on, I again turned my steps into 
a dense section of the woods. Suddenly there was 
a twinkle of wings, a flash of olive- green, a sharp 
Chip^ and then there before me, a few rods away, 
a little bird went hopping about on the ground, 
picking up dainties from the brown leaves. What 
could it be ? Was I about to find a species that 
was new to me? It really seemed so. My opera- 
glass, when levelled upon the bird, revealed olive- 
green upper parts, yellow or buff under parts, and 
four black stripes on the head, two on the pileum 
and one through each eye. It was the rare worm- 
eating warbler (^Helmithetus ve7'77iivoriis) at last, — a 
bird that had for many years eluded me. The little 
charmer was quite wary, chirping nerv^ously while I 
ogled him, — for it was a male, — and then hopped up 
into a sapling, and finally scurried away out of sight. 

A few steps farther on in the woods an extremely 
fine cat-like call swung down, like thread of sound, 
from the tree-tops. Of course, it was my tiny 
acquaintance the blue-gray gnat-catcher, and his 
pretty spouse, who had arrived, perhaps from Cuba 
or Guatemala, a few days before. What an immense 
distance for their frail little wings to traverse, 
'^through tracts and provinces of sky"! You 
seldom see anything more dainty and dream-like 
than the fluttering of these birds from one tree-top 
to another, reminding you of an animated cloudlet 
hovering and darting about in mid- air. Not a more 



A BIRDS' GALA-DAY. 145 

faj-like bird visits my woodland than the blue-gray 
gnat-catcher. Even the ruby-throated humming- 
bird, though still smaller, seems rather roly-poly 
in comparison ; and no warbler, not even the grace- 
ful redstart, can flit about so airily. One of the 
gnat-catchers in the tree-top presently darted out 
after a miller, which tried to escape by letting itself 
fall toward the ground. A vigorous drama followed. 
The bird plunged nimbly after, whirling round and 
round in a spiral course until it had secured its 
wriggling prize. 

The gnat-catcher lisps a little song, — a gossamer 
melody, it might be called. His slender voice 
has quite a " resonant tang." On that day I did 
not take notes on his music, but the next day I 
had a good opportunity to do so ; and I give the 
result, especially as no minute description of this 
bird's song has been recorded, so far as I know. 
I had often heard it before, but had neglected to 
listen to it intently enough to analyze its peculiar 
quality. Bending my ear upon it, I distinctly 
and unmistakably detected, besides the bird's own 
notes, the notes of three other birds, — those of the 
cat-bird's alarm-call, of the phoebe's song, and of the 
goldfinch's song and call. The imitation in each 
case was perfect, save that the gnat-catcher's tones 
were slenderer than those of the birds whose music 
he had (if I may so speak) plagiarized. Is this 
tiny minstrel a mocker? Perhaps my description 
may be a surprise to many students of bird min- 
strelsy, but I can only say that, having listened to 



146 IN BIRD LAND, 

the song for fully an hour, I could not well have 
been mistaken. Several times the reproduction of 
the goldfinch's song was so perfect that I looked 
the tree all over again and again with my glass for 
that bird, but goldfinches there were none about. 
Moreover, the gnat-catcher was in plain sight, 
dropping quite low in the tree part of the time ; and 
there can be no doubt that every strain proceeded 
from his lyrical little throat. 

The forenoon and part of the afternoon slipped 
away all too rapidly, bringing many valuable additions 
to my stock of bird lore; but I must pass others 
by to describe the most important '^ find " (to me) 
of this red-letter day in my experience. At about 
half-past four o'clock I reached an old bush-covered 
gravel-bank where many birds of various species 
have been encountered. As I stepped near a pool 
at the foot of the bank, a little bird flashed into 
view, setting my pulses all a-flutter. It was the 
hooded warbler, the first of the species I had ever 
seen. He was recognizable at once by the bright 
yellow hood he wore, bordered all around with deep 
black. A bright, flitting blossom of the bird world ! 

For fully an hour I lingered in that ^' embowered 
solitude," watching the bird's quaint behavior, which 
deserves more than a mere passing notice. He was 
not in the least shy or nervous, but seemed rather 
to court my presence. Almost every moment was 
spent in capturing insects on the wing or in sitting 
on a perch watching for them to flash into view. 
Like a genuine flycatcher, as soon as a buzzing insect 



A BIRDS' GALA-DAY, 147 

hove in sight, he would dart out after it, and never 
once failed to secure his prize. Sometimes he would 
plunge swiftly downward after a gnat or a miller, and 
once, having caught a miller that was large and in- 
clined to be refractory, he flew to the ground, beat 
it awhile on the clods, and then swallowed it with a 
consequential air which seemed to say, ^^ That is 
my way of disposing of such cases 1 '' Several times 
he mounted almost straight up from his perch, and 
twice he almost turned a somersault in pursuit of an 
insect. Once he clung like a titmouse to the bole 
of a sapling. I could often hear the snapping of 
his mandibles as he nabbed his prey. When an in- 
sect came between him and myself, he would fear- 
lessly dash directly toward me, as if he meant to fly 
in my face or alight on my head, often coming within 
a few feet of me. He seemed to be as confiding 
as a child. When I stepped to the other end of the 
gravel -bank, going even a little beyond it, curiously 
enough, the bird pursued me j then, as an experi- 
ment, I walked back to my first post of observation, 
and, to my surprise, he followed me again. Was he 
really desirous of my company? Or did he know 
that I intended to ring his praises in type? At 
length I stole away a short distance among the trees, 
but presently a loud chirping in my rear arrested 
my attention. I turned back, and found it to be 
my new-made friend, the hooded warbler, who, 
strange to say, seemed to be calling me back to his 
haunt. Then I climbed to the top of the gravel- 
bank ; he selected perches higher up in the sapUngs 



148 IN BIRD LAND. 

than before, so as to be nearer me, — at least, so it 
appeared. The affectionate little darling ! The only- 
other sound he uttered during the entire time of 
our hobnobbing — his and mine — was the slenderest 
hint of a song, which was really more of a twitter 
than a tune. 

But at last I bade the little sorcerer a reluctant 
adieu. In a hollow of the woods I lay down on the 
green grass, and listened for half an hour to the 
lyrical medley of a brown thrasher perched on a 
treetop. It was indeed a wonderful performance, 
and the longer I listened the more its witchery grew 
upon me. My special purpose in bending my whole 
attention upon this performance was to see if the 
thrasher mimicked the songs of other birds. Many 
persons think him a genuine imitator; indeed, in 
some places he is called the northern mocking-bird. 
I am forced to say, however, that, as far as my obser- 
vation goes, he does not mimic, but sings his own com- 
positions, like the original genius he is. In all that 
song, and others since listened to, not a single strain 
did he utter that I could positively identify as be- 
longing to the musical repertoire of another bird. 
It is true, he sometimes, in the midst of his song, 
uttered the alarm call of the robin ; but as both birds 
belong to the same family, this was not to be 
wondered at, and affords no evidence of the gift of 
imitation. If the thrasher does mimic his fellow- 
minstrels, as many persons contend, the borrowed 
notes are so brief and so intermingled and blent 
with his own music as to be unrecognizable. 



A BIRDS' GAL A- DAY. 149 

On the other hand, this tawny vocaHst utters musi- 
cal strains that are entirely unlike anything else in 
the whole realm of bird minstrelsy, proving his song 
to be characteristic. The brown thrasher is not a 
musical pirate, but an original composer, — a sort of 
Mozart or Beethoven in the bird world. And how 
wonderful are some of his slurred runs ! Nothing 
in the domain of music could be finer, and the harsh 
notes he frequently interpolates only serve to ac- 
centuate and enhance the melody of those that are 
truly lyrical. 

In his engaging book entitled " Birds in the Bush," 
Bradford Torrey, who is second to none in the school 
of popular writers on feathered folk, characterizes this 
tawny vocalist in a most admirable manner. How- 
ever, in regard to the matter of mimicry, his obser- 
vations differ slightly from my own; yet I gladly 
quote what he says rather incidentally on the subject. 
One day he was Hstening to three thrashers singing 
simultaneously. ^' In the midst of the hurly-burly," 
he writes, ^^one of the trio suddenly sounded the 
whippoorwill's call twice, — an absolutely perfect re- 
production." Then he adds, somewhat jocosely, in 
a foot-note : '' The ' authorities ' long since forbade 
Harporhynchus rufus to play the mimic. Probably in 
the excitement of the moment this fellow forgot him- 
self." Of course, one cannot gainsay the testimony 
of so careful an observer and so conscientious a re- 
porter as Mr. Torrey; yet it is possible that this 
whippoorwill call was only a slip of the thrasher's 
voice and not an intended imitation ; at all events, 



fSo 



IN BIRD LAND, 



in my opinion, such vocal coincidences, whether 
accidental or designed, are of rare occurrence. 

Since the foregoing observations were made and 
first published, I have often sought to prove them 
untrue, but have failed. No thrasher has ever, in 
my hearing, unmistakably plagiarized a single strain 
from his fellow-musicians. Fearing my ear for music 
might be defective, rendering me incapable of distin- 
guishing correctly the various songs of birds, I put 
myself to the test in this way : On one of the streets 
of my native town there is a brilliant mocking-bird, 
whose cage is often hung out on a veranda. Again 
and again I have stopped to listen to his ringing 
medley, and have never failed to hear him distinctly 
mimic the songs and calls of other birds, such as 
the robin, blue jay, cardinal grossbeak, and red- 
headed woodpecker. Why should I be able in- 
stantly to detect the notes of other birds in the 
mocker's song and never once be able to detect 
them in the song of the thrasher ? 

But it is fully time to return to my ramble. The 
gifted songster in the tree-top would sometimes pipe 
a strain of such exquisite sweetness that it seemed 
to surprise himself; he would pause a moment, as if 
to reflect upon it and fix it in mind for future use ; 
and erelong he would repeat it, reminding his ad- 
miring auditor of Browning's lines on the Wise 
Thrush, — 

" He sings each song twice over, 
Lest you should think he never could recapture 
The first fine careless rapture." 



A BIRDS' GALA-DAY. 151 

New strains were confinually introduced. So loud 
and full were some of his notes that ^' the blue air 
trembled with his song/' and the woods fairly woke 
into echoes. It is really doubtful if the disparaging 
term " hurly-burly " should be applied to such peer- 
less vocalization. It was bird opera music of the 
highest style, improvised for the occasion, and formed 
a fitting conclusion to this rare birds' gala-day. 



152 IN BIRD LAND. 



XIV. 
RIFE WITH BIRDS. 

A JAUNT TO A NEW FIELD. 

A FOUR days' outing along the Ohio River one 
spring brought me some "finds" that may be 
of interest to bird lovers. Everywhere there were 
the twinkle of wings, the twitter of voices, and the 
charm of song* indeed, so plentiful were the 
feathered folk that the title of this article is far 
less poetical than realistic and descriptive. It was 
the latter part of May, the time in that latitude 
when the birds were in full song, at least those 
which were not too busy with their family cares. 
Sixty-four species were seen during a stay of four 
days in the neighborhood. 

Mine host was a farmer whose premises afforded a 
habitat for numerous birds, there being many trees 
and bushes in the yard and a large orchard near 
by. In one of the silver maples a pair of war- 
bling vireos had built a tiny pendent cradle, as is 
their wont, set in a bower of shining twigs and 
green leaves. There it swayed in the zephyrs, rock- 
ing the birdlings to sleep and filling their dreams 
with rhythm; and the lullabies that the happy 



RIFE WITH BIRDS. 



153 



parents sang were cheeffal and engaging, in spite of 
the fact that some critic has pronounced the min- 
strelsy of the warbUng vireo tiresome. Tiresome, 
forsooth ! Truth to tell, the more closely you listen 
to it the sweeter it grows. All day long, from peep 
of dawn to evening twilight, those quaint, continuous 
lays could be heard, now subdued and desultory, 
now almost as vigorous as a robin's carol. 

It sometimes seemed as if the vireos and orchard 
orioles were rival vocalists. If so, a prize should be 
awarded to both, — to the vireos for persistency, for 
never letting up ; to the orioles for richness and 
melody of tone. Many a rollicking two-part con- 
cert they gave. 

But there were other voices frequently heard in 
the chorus, though not so continuously as those of 
the* birds just mentioned. A song-sparrow, which 
had built a dainty cot in a bush not two rods from 
the veranda, sometimes trilled an interlude of en- 
trancing sweetness, taking the bays for real tuneful- 
ness from every rival. Then, to my surprise, a 
Maryland yellow-throat, shy little fellow in other 
places, would frequently sing his heart out in the 
small trees and silver maples of the front yard. He 
did not fly off or discontinue his song when an 
auditor stood right beneath his perch, but would 
throw back his masked head, distend his golden 
throat, and deliver his trill to his own and every- 
body else's satisfaction. Very often, too, the indigo- 
bird, just returned from a bath in the cerulean 
depths, would enrich the harmony with the most 



154 ^^ BIRD LAND. 

rollicksome, if not the most tuneful lay of the 
chorus. As a sort of accompaniment, the chipping- 
sparrow often trilled his silvery monotone ; and once 
a robin added his Cheerily, here, here I 

So much for the birds about the house, though 
there were many others that have not been men- 
tioned ; in fact, there were some twenty species in 
all. There were also birds a-plenty in other places. 
A half day was spent in some fields bordering the 
broad river. On a green slope was a bush-sparrow's 
nest, daintily bowered in the grass by the side of a 
blackberry bush, and in a thicket hard by two 
yellow-breasted chats had placed their grassy cradles, 
proclaiming their secret to all the world by their 
loud cries of warning to keep away. It is odd that 
these birds, shy and nervous as they are, should go 
so far out of their way to tell you that they have a 
nest somewhere in the copse that you mustn't 
touch, mustn't even look for. While you are yet a 
quarter of a mile away, they will utter their loud 
cries of warning ; and if you go to the thicket where 
they are, you will be almost sure to find their nest, 
so poorly have they learned the lesson of discretion. 

In a Httle hollow of the copse a dying crow lay 
prone upon the ground. At intervals he would 
struggle and gasp in a spasmodic way. When I 
gently moved him with my cane, he grasped it with 
his claws and held it quite firmly. I put the stick 
to his large black beak. He took hold of it feebly, 
ready to defend himself even with his last gasp, for 
that it proved to be ; he lay over and died the next 



RIFE WITH BIRDS, 155 

instant. I could not give the pathology of the 
case, as no wounds could be found on his body. 

One of the most interesting finds of the day was 
the nest of a green heron, often called ^' fly-up-the- 
creek." The nest, only a loosely constructed plat- 
form of sticks, was placed on the branches of a 
leaning clump of small trees, and was about twenty 
feet from the ground. The startled bird flew back 
and forth in the row of trees, and even went back 
to the nest while I watched her at a distance, but 
was too shy to remain there when I went near. In 
spite of the offensive nicknames foisted upon this 
heron, it is a handsome bird. As this one flew back 
and forth she made quite an elegant picture, with 
her long, glossy-brown neck and tail, white throat- 
line, ash-blue back, dappled under parts, and the 
long, slender feathers draping her hind-neck. But 
why was she called the green heron? Look as 
sharply as I would, I could descry no green in her 
plumage. A few days later, however, I examined 
a mounted specimen, and then the puzzle was 
solved; for an iridescent green patch on the wing 
was so marked a feature of its coloration as to ac- 
count for the bird's common name. 

Memory will always linger fondly about a certain 
afternoon and evening spent on the steep hills 
mounting up toward the sky a quarter of a mile or 
more back from the river. To a pedestrian like 
myself, used to rambling over a comparatively level 
scope of country, these high hills afforded a wonder- 
ful prospect, and almost made my head dizzy, as I 



156 IN BIRD LAND, 

clambered far up their steep sides. Perhaps the 
mountain-climber would think them tame. It made 
my head swim that evening to see a towhee bunting 
dart from a copse near by and hurl himself with reck- 
less abandon down the declivity, as if there were not 
the sHghtest danger of breaking his neck or dashing 
himself to pieces. He stopped just in time to 
plunge into another thicket for which he had taken 
aim. 

As the sun sank, I seated myself on the grass far 
up the steep, and looked down on the beautiful 
valley below me. There was the broad Ohio, wend- 
ing its way between the sentinel hills, the green 
clover fields and meadows smiHng good-night to the 
sinking sun, and the brown ploughed fields with their 
green corn-rows. A wood-thrush mounted to a dead 
twig at the very top of a tall oak some distance 
below me, and poured forth his sad vesper hymn, 
so bewitchingly sweet and far-away ; the while Ken- 
tucky warblers and cardinal grossbeaks piped their 
lullabies or madrigals, as they chose, from the dark- 
ling woods ; and, altogether, it was a never-to-be- 
forgotten evening. 

An early morning hour found me climbing the ac- 
clivity and mounting to the top of the hill. In a 
clover-field the gossamer Tse-e-e of the grasshopper 
sparrow, a birdlet among birds, pierced my ear. 
Presently a pair of these sparrows were seen on the 
fence- stakes, and, yes, one of them had a worm in 
its bill, indicating that there were little ones in the 
neighborhood. If I could find a grasshopper spar- 



RIFE WITH BIRDS. 157 

row's nest ! Often had I sought for one, but with- 
out success. For a long while my eyes followed the 
bird with the worm in her bill. Every now and then 
she would dart over into the grass as if to feed her 
bantlings, and I would mark the spot where she 
alighted ; but when I went to it no nest or bird- 
lings were to be found. Again and again I fairly 
trembled, thinking myself on the verge of a dis- 
covery, only to be balked completely in the end. 
But one victory was won ; I got close enough to the 
bird to see distinctly with my glass the yellow mark- 
ings on the edge of the wings, — a characteristic I 
had never before been able to make out. Curiously 
enough, one wing of this bird was quite profusely 
tinged with yellow, while the yellow of the other 
could just be distinguished. 

Why should not a bird-student frankly chronicle 
his failures as well as his successes ? During the 
day I encountered three birds that I was unable to 
identify, try as I would. One was singing lustily in 
some tall trees, and when at length I got my glass 
upon him he looked like a Carolina wren ; but that 
bird has been a familiar acquaintance for many years, 
— comparatively speaking, — and I have so often 
heard his varied roundels that they certainly are all 
known to me. Moreover, the quahty of this mys- 
terious singer's voice and the manner of his execu- 
tion were wholly different from those of the Carolina 
or any other wren of my acquaintance. The fol- 
lowing is a transcription of the song as near as it 
could be represented by letters : Che-ha-p-e-e-7'-r-7' I 



IS 8 IN BIRD LAND. 

che-ha-p-e-e-r-r-r ! repeated at brief intervals loudly 
and vigorously, but without variation. The bird had 
a white supercihary Hne, brownish- barred wings, and 
whitish under parts. A consultation of all the man- 
uals in my possession fails to solve the problem. 

In a deep gorge, cut through the country by a 
small creek — small now, at least — on its way to 
the river, two curious bird calls were heard ; but one 
bird kept himself hidden in a dense thicket, and the 
other bolted into the dark woods that covered a 
steep acclivity. The first bird sang rather than 
called, and the words he said sounded quite dis- 
tinct : Che-o-wadeUl-wade' ll-chip ! — a sentiment that 
he repeated again and again. 

In spite of these disappointments my jaunt through 
this ravine was exceedingly pleasant, — so delightfully 
quiet and solitary; not a human sound to disturb 
the sacredness of the place ; nothing but the songs 
and calls of wild birds. 

^' 'T was one of those charmed days 

When the genius of God doth flow ; 
The wind may alter twenty ways, 

A tempest cannot blow : 
It may blow north, it still is warm ; 

Or south, it still is clear ; 
Or east, it smells like a clover-farm ; 

Or west, no thunder fear." 

In one of the loneliest parts of the ravine there 
appeared on the scene my first Louisiana water- 
thrush, often called the large-billed wagtail. There 
it stood '^ teetering " on a spray or a rock, or skim- 
ming through the shallow water, its speckled breast 



RIFE WITH BIRDS. 159 

and olive back harmonizing — I had almost said 
rhyming — with the gray of the creek's bed, the 
crystal of the water, and the green of the thicket- 
fringed banks. It was part and parcel of the scene, 
— a lone bird in a lone place. But, hold ! not 
lone, after all. Presently a young wagtail, the 
image of its mamma, emerged from somewhere or 
nowhere, and ran toward the old bird with open 
mouth, twinkling wings, and a pretty, coaxing call. 
She thrust something into its mouth ; but still the 
bantling coaxed for more, when she dashed away a 
few feet, picked up another tidbit from the water, 
ran back to her httle charge, and fed it again. But 
now, when it still pursued her, she seemed to lose 
her patience, for she rushed threateningly toward it, 
causing it to scamper away, and then she flew off. 
Yet after that she fed either the same or another 
youngster a number of times. Once a water- thrush 
went swinging down the gorge, the very poetry of 
graceful poise and movement, looking more like a 
naiad than a real flesh-and-blood birdlet. 

On a horizontal branch extending out over the 
rippling stream, a wood- thrush sat on her mud 
cottage ; but whether she appreciated the romantic 
character of the situation or not, she did not say. 
There were many other interesting feathered folk in 
the gorge and on its wooded steeps, each " a 
brother of the dancing leaves ; " but to describe 
them all would take too long, and merely to name 
them would be too much like reciting a dry 
catalogue. 



l6o IN BIRD LAND. 



XV. 

VARIOUS PHASES OF BIRD LIFE.i 
I. 

BIRD COURTSHIP. 

NO one who has studied the birds can deny that 
there is genuine sexual love among them. 
Many species act on the principle that ^* a pure life 
for two" is the only kind of life to live, and there- 
fore a match once made is a match that lasts until 
death does them part. There may be fickleness, 
divorce, and downright unfaithfulness among birds 
sometimes, and there certainly is polygamy among 
some species ; but such examples of irregularity are 
rather the exception than the rule. Monogamy 
largely prevails, and I have no doubt that any 
departure from the regular connubial relation creates 
a scandal in bird circles. 

As in the human world, so in the bird world a 
period of courtship precedes the celebration of the 
nuptials. But the mode differs in different kingdoms 
of creation. Many lovers in feathers conduct their 

1 This series of papers, as well as some others in this vol- 
ume, was written at the suggestion of Mr. Amos R. Wells, 
of " The Golden Rule," Boston, and was first published in 
that journal. 



PHASES OF BIRD LIFE. i6l 

wooing in a somewhat rudely persistent and obtru- 
sive fashion. Society would soon ostracize the 
human suitor having such manners, and might even 
consider him amenable to the civil courts, and put 
him in jail as a character unfit to be abroad. How- 
ever, if hot pursuit, brazen manners, and half-coer- 
cive measures are considered *^ good form " in 
bird land, we of the human genus are the last who 
have a right to find fault, for are we not the most 
conventional beings on the face of the earth ? You 
might almost as well be in limbo or inferno as out 
of style. Was there not a time when even the 
flaming sunflower was regarded as the highest 
emblem of the beautiful, merely because it was the 
*' fad," and not because anybody really felt that it 
possessed special aesthetic qualities ? '^ People who 
live in glass houses ought not to throw stones," is 
the saucy challenge of the merry chickadee to his 
human critic, as he dashes, like an animated ^^ nigger- 
chaser," after the little Dulcinea whom he has 
marked for his bride. Then he stops, and, balancing 
on a spray, whistles his sweetest minor tune, Pe-e- 
w-e-e^ pe-e-e-w-e-e ; which, being interpreted, prob- 
ably means, — 

** Does not all the blood within me 
Leap to meet thee, leap to meet thee, 
As the spring to meet the sunshine ? " 

No doubt many a feathered swain is smitten, and 
smitten very deeply too, with Cupid* s arrow, flung 
by some charming capturer of hearts. A little boy's 
love-letter to a lassie who had taken his throb- 

II 



1 62 IN BIRD LAND. 

bing heart by storm, ran thus : " I love you very 
dearly. You are so nice that I don't blame any- 
body for falling in love with you. I don't see why 
everybody does n't fall in love with you." If one 
may judge from the impetuosity with which most 
feathered lovers press their suits, there must be 
many instances of such captivation in bird land. 

Have you ever been witness of the wooing of that 
half-knightly, half- boorish bird, the yellow-hammer? 
In the grove near my house several pairs of these 
birds had a great time one spring settling their 
hymeneal affairs. For hours a lover would pursue 
the object of his affections around and around, never 
giving her a moment's respite. No sooner had she 
gone bounding to another tree than he would dash 
after, often flinging himself recklessly right upon the 
spot where she had alighted, compelling her to hitch 
away, to avoid being struck by her impetuous lover. 
His policy seemed to be to take her heart by storm, 
to wear her out, to give her no time to think matters 
over, to compel her, nolens vokns, to consent to his 
proposed marital alliance. No doubt she finally 
said yes, merely to get rid of him, and then failed 
of her purpose. After the courtship has passed its 
first stage, and the wooed one has grown less shy, 
the bowings and scrapings of the yellow-hammers 
are truly ludicrous. The female will flit away only 
a short distance, and will sometimes turn toward her 
mottled suitor, when they will wag their heads at 
each other, now to this side, now to that, in the 
most serio-comical manner imaginable. It is the 



PHASES OF BIRD LIFE. 163 

way these lords and ladies of woodpeckerdom make 
their royal obeisances. 

On a pleasant day in February two downy wood- 
peckers were '' scraping acquaintance/' The male 
pursued his sweetheart about in the trees after the 
manner of his kind ; but occasionally she would 
stand at bay and apparently challenge him to come 
nearer if he dared. Then both of them would Hft 
their striped forms to an almost perpendicular posi- 
tion, their heads and beaks pointing straight toward 
the sky, and their bodies swaying grotesquely fromx 
side to side. This little comedy over, the finical 
miss bolted to another tree, with her cavalier in hot 
pursuit. 

Coy as the feathered ladies usually seem, many of 
them apparently are genuine flirts, and would feel 
greatly disappointed should their lovers give over the 
chase. They evidently want to be won, but not too 
easily. (Perhaps it might be said, en passant^ there 
are belles in other than the bird community who resort 
to similar naive and winsome ruses.) In a shady 
nook of the woods I once saw a gallant towhee 
bunting employing all the arts at his command to 
win a damsel who seemed very demure. He was an 
extremely handsomely formed and finely clad bird, — ■ 
a real edition de luxe. He flew down to the ground, 
picked up a brown leaf in his bill, and flourished it 
at her, as much as to say, " It is time for nest-build- 
ing, dear." Then he spread his wings and hand-, 
some tail, and strutted almost Hke a peacock about 
on the leafy ground. But, no, she would not, and 



1 64 ^^ BIRD LAND. 

she would not, and there was no use in talking ; she 
flitted, half contemptuously, to a more distant bush. 
That proud cockney need not think she cared for 
him ! She was n't going to lose her heart to every 
lovelorn swain who came along. But, mark you, 
when I tried to separate them, by driving one to 
one side of the path and the other to the opposite 
side, the little hypocrite contrived every time, with 
admirable finesse, to flit over toward her knightly 
suitor. Three times the experiment brought the 
same result. Her maidenly reserve had a good deal 
of calculation in it, after all, innocent as she appeared. 
Perhaps she had conned Longfellow's wise quatrain : 

" How can I tell the signals and the signs 
By which one heart another heart divines .? 
How can I tell the many thousand ways 
By which it keeps the secret it betrays ? " 

That the course of true love does not always run 
smooth in the bird world as elsewhere, goes without 
saying. There are feuds and jealousies. Sometimes 
two beaux admire the same belle, and then there 
may be war to the death. I have seen two rival 
song- sparrows clutch in the air, peck and claw at 
each other viciously, and come down to the ground 
with a thud that must have knocked the breath out 
of them for a few moments. Incredible as it may 
seem, an acute observer of bird life declares that the 
females are most likely to quarrel and fight over 
their lovers. At such times the male stands by, 
looks on approvingly, and lets them fight it out, no 



PHASES OF BIRD LIFE. 1 65 

doubt pluming himself on the fact that he is of suffi- 
cient importance to be the cause of a duel or a 
sparring-match among the ladies. 

Even those birds that seem to be the impersona- 
tion of kindliness often engage in vigorous wrangles 
before they are able to settle the troubles that arise 
from match-making. The bluebird, of the siren 
voice and cerulean hue, is a case in point. Mr. Bur- 
roughs describes, in his inimitable way, the vigorous 
campaign of two pairs of bluebirds, which could not 
decide the subject of matrimony among themselves 
without resort to arms. Both the males and females 
engaged in more than one set-to. Once the hot- 
headed lovers closed with each other in the air, fell 
to the ploughed ground, and remained there, tugging 
and pecking and tweaking for nearly two minutes. 
Yet, when they separated, neither seemed to be any 
the worse for the melee. 

The tiny hummers are extremely belligerent birds. 
A writer describes the contests of certain humming- 
birds in the island of Jamaica when moved by 
jealousy. When two males have become rivals, they 
will level their long, pointed bills at each other, and 
then dash together with the swiftness of an arrow ; 
they meet, separate, meet again, with shrill chirping, 
dart upward, then downward, and circle around and 
around, until the eye grows weary of watching them, 
and can no longer follow their rapid transits. At 
length one falls, exhausted, to the ground, while the 
other rests, panting and trembling, on a leafy spray, 
or perhaps tumbles, mortally wounded, to the earth. 



1 66 IN BIRD LAND. 

There are some diminutive hummers, called Mexi- 
can stars, which become perfect furies when their 
jealousy is aroused. Their throats swell ; their crests, 
wings, and tails expand ; and they clinch and spear 
each other in the air like the veriest disciples of 
Bellona. Thus a giant passion may dwell in a 
pygmy form. 

It will be pleasant to turn to more gentle ways of 
pressing a love-suit. The manners of some males 
are very courtly while trying to win a spouse. They 
strut about most gracefully, and display their plumes 
to the best advantage, as if they would charm the 
coy damsel of their choice. The dainty kinglets 
erect and expand their crest feathers so that the 
golden or ruby spot spreads over the entire crown, 
making them look handsome indeed. 

It has never been my good fortune to witness the 
wooing of the ruffed grouse, miscalled the partridge 
in New England and the pheasant in the Middle 
States ; but Mr. Langille has seen the performance, 
and with good reason goes into raptures over it. 
He describes it in this way : " Behold the male 
strutting before the female in time of courtship ! 
The first time I saw him in this act I was utterly 
at a loss to identify him. The ruff about the neck 
is perfectly erect, so that the head is almost dis- 
guised ; the wings are partially opened and drooped 
gracefully ; the feathers are generally elevated ; the 
tail, with its rich, black band, is spread to the ut- 
most and thrown forward. Thus he stands, nearly 
motionless, a genuine object of beauty." 



PHASES OF BIRD LIFE. 167 

One of the most brilliant exhibitions of this kind 
must be that of the great emerald birds of Paradise, 
as they disport themselves before the object of their 
affection. They gather in flocks of from twelve to 
twenty on certain trees. Mr. A. R. Wallace, in his 
*' Malay Archipelago," gives an interesting descrip- 
tion of these ^^dancing-parties," as they are called 
by the natives. The wings of the male birds, he 
says, " are raised vertically over the back ; the head 
is bent down and stretched out; and the long 
plumes" — those that spring like spray from the 
sides or shoulders — " are raised and expanded till 
they form two magnificent golden fans, striped with 
deep red at the base, and fading off into the pale 
brown tint of the finely divided and softly waving 
points; the whole bird is then overshadowed by 
them, the crouching body, yellow head, and emerald- 
green throat forming but a foundation and setting 
to the golden glory which waves above them." 

No wonder the maiden's reserve all melts away, 
and she soon yields willing consent to her lover's 
importunings ! There is only one flaw in this beau- 
tiful picture, and that is made by man himself, — 
man, the meddler in avian happiness. While the 
birds are absorbed in their courtship, the natives, 
for love of pelf, steal near and shoot them with 
blunt arrows. Sometimes all the males are thus 
murdered, ruthlessly, heartlessly, before the danger is 
discovered. Of course the mercenary butchers sell 
the plumes for decorative purposes. Gold is the 
only thing that glitters in the eyes of a sordid world. 
Some people spell '^ God " with an •* I." 



1 68 IN BIRD LAND. 

No doubt vocal display also plays a large part in 
the courtship of birds. Nothing else in the early 
spring can wholly account for the wonderful musical 
tournaments that one hears lilting so lavishly on the 
air. Many a damsel, doubtless, listens to the numer- 
ous vocalists of her neighborhood, and then chooses 
the suitor whose voice possesses the finest qualities, 
or whose madrigals have the truest ring. How many 
things may combine to determine the choice of the 
parties, it would be difficult to say. Perhaps some 
birds are handsomer than others in the eyes of 
those that are looking for mates ; perhaps some 
have more courtly and agreeable manners ; perhaps 
some put more fervor into their wooing or more 
passion into their songs ; perhaps some are better 
tempered ; others may be more industrious or frugal 
or tidy, and thus will make better husbands or house- 
wives. Many a lass doubtless is sorely puzzled as 
to whom she shall choose for a mate. One may 
even fancy her crooning Addison's quaint, paradox- 
ical lines to a whimsical lover concerning whose 
eligibility she harbors some doubt, — 

'* In all thy humors, whether grave or mellow, 
Thou 'rt such a touchy, testy, pleasant fellow. 
Hast so much wit and mirth and spleen about thee, 
That there 's no living with thee or without thee.'* 

One question — not a profound one, I confess — 
must bring this chapter to a close : Do the plumed 
ladies ever propose? One might imagine a love- 
lorn female bird throwing aside her maidenly reserve 



PHASES OF BIRD LIFE, 169 

in a fit of desperation, and singing the lines of Mrs. 

Browning, — 

" But I love you, sir ; 
And when a woman says she loves a man, 
The man must hear her, though he love her not." 



11. 

BIRD NURSERIES. 

A bird's nest is a bedroom, dining-room, sitting- 
room, parlor, and nursery all in one ; for there 
the young birds sleep, eat, rest, entertain their 
guests (if they ever have any), and receive their 
earliest training. Yet there is no doubt that in 
treating the nest as a nursery we make use of the 
aptest simile that could be chosen. Those who 
have not given the matter special attention would 
scarcely suspect how many and varied are the in- 
terests that cluster around these dwellings of our litde \ 
brothers and sisters of field and woodland. The 
growth of the bantling family, their mental develop- 
ment, their deportment in the nest, their chirpings 
and chatterings, their way of beguiling the time, the 
length of their stay in their childhood home, — all 
these, and many other problems of equally absorbing 
interest, can be solved only by the closest surveil- 
lance. But it is no light task to watch a nest at 
close enough range to study the natural, unrestrained 
ways of the young birds. The fact is, in many, 
perhaps most, cases it cannot be done. 



I 70 IN BIRD LAND. 

But before describing the inmates of the nursery 
it would be well to give some attention to the nursery 
itself, its site and structure. By going to the books 
I might tell you of many quaint nests, of the nests of 
the tailor-bird, the water-ouzel, the parula warbler, 
the burrowing owl, and many others; but — begging 
pardon for my conceit — I prefer not to get my 
material second-hand. One would rather describe 
one's own observations, even though one may not be 
able to present so rare a list of curios. The nest of 
the common wood-thrush, right here in my own 
neighborhood, is of far more personal interest than 
the remarkable nest of the fairy martin of Australia, 
which I have small hope of ever seeing. 

Having mentioned the nest of the wood-thrush, 
I might as well begin with it. It is not a remarkable 
structure from an architectural point of view. It might 
be called a semi-adobe dwelling, thatched with vari- 
ous kinds of grasses and leaves, and lined with vege- 
table fibres. It is much like the nest of the robin, 
only Madam Thrush does not go quite so extensively 
into the plastering business. It has been interesting 
to study the ingenuity of these sylvan architects in 
choosing sites for their nests. They seem to know 
just where a nest may be built with the least labor in 
order to make it sit firmly in its place. In the woods 
that I most frequently haunt there is a sort of bushy 
sapling whose branches, at a certain point on the 
main stem, often grow out almost horizontally for a 
few inches, and then form an elbow by shooting up 
almost vertically, thus making an arbor, as it were, 



PHASES OF BIRD LIFE. - 171 

which says plainly to the thrush, ^^ This is just the 
site for a nest." In these crotches the wood-thrush 
rears her dwelling, its walls being firmly supported all 
around by the perpendicular branches. Do these 
saplings grow for the special benefit of the wood- 
thrush, or does the feathered artificer accommodate 
herself to the circumstances, or is there mutual 
adaptation between bird and bush? That is a 
problem for the evolutionist. 

But the thrush often selects other sites for her 
nursery. One day I found a nest deftly placed on 
the point of intersection of two almost horizontal 
limbs. From the lower one several small branches 
grew up in an oblique direction, to give the walls of 
the mud cottage firm support. The intersecting 
boughs belonged to two different saplings. Another 
nest that did not have very strong external support 
was set down upon the short stub of a limb, which 
ran up into the mud floor and held the structure 
firmly in place. 

One day I stumbled upon a very tall thrush nest, 
looking almost like a tower in its crotch. As the 
nestlings had left, I lifted it from its place and tore 
it apart, thinking the thrush might have fallen upon 
the summer warbler's ruse to outwit the cow-bunting 
by adding another story to her hut, thus leaving the 
bunting's intruded egg in the cellar. But such was 
not the case ; she had simply done the unorthodox 
thing of using an old nest, still in good condition, 
for a foundation upon which to rear the new structure. 
Will the theologians of thrushdom bring charges of 



172 



IN BIRD LAND. 



heresy against her ? Was it really a case of '^ higher 
criticism^'? It may have been, especially when you 
remember that these thrushes often weave into their 
nests fragments of newspapers, some of which may 
contain theological discussions. 

One peculiarity in the nest-building of most of the 
birds of my neighborhood may as well be mentioned 
now as later ; they seldom build in the densest and 
most secluded parts of the woods, but usually choose 
some bush or sapling near the border, or close to a 
woodland path or winding road, where people some- 
times pass. Perhaps they do this because the 
natural enemies of birds, such as squirrels, minks, 
and hawks, fight shy of these pathways traversed by 
human feet. Perhaps, too, the birds do not like the 
gloom and loneliness of the more sequestered por- 
tions of the woods. They like to be semi-sociable, 
at least, and are not disposed to make monks and 
nuns of themselves. 

A far more artless nest is that of the turtle-dove. 
This bird should attend an industrial college for a 
term or two, to learn the art of building ; but it 
would do no good : the meek little thing would cling 
obstinately to her inherited ideas, and never become 
a connoisseur in nest construction. Sometimes, 
when you stand beneath her cottage, you can see 
her white eggs gleaming through the interstices of 
the loosely matted floor. As a rule, she builds on a 
branch ; but something possessed one little mother, 
in the spring of 189 1, to build her nursery on a large 
stump about six feet high, standing right in the 



PHASES OF BIRD LIFE. 173 

midst of the woods. I fear she was not a well- trained 
bird ; but I watched her closely, and must concede 
that, whether her conduct was in ''good form" or 
not, she reared her brood in the most approved 
manner. I could come within two feet of her, and 
almost touch her with my cane, before she would fly 
from the nest. How her little round eyes stared at 
me without so much as a blink ! But she was greatly 
agitated, for her bosom palpitated with the violent 
throbbing of her heart. 

*' I Ve found a turtle-dove's nest on the ground," 
said my friend, the young farmer across the fields, 
one spring day. (No matter about the year of grace, 
for every year is a year of grace in bird study.) My 
head was shaken skeptically, and I smiled in a 
patronizing way, for a turtle-dove's nest on the 
ground was an unknown quantity in all my study of 
birds ; but my friend declared, " Honest Injun ! " 
and I left him to his obstinate opinions. But, hold ! 
who, after all, proved to be the donkey? A few 
days later I myself stumbled upon a turtle-dove's 
nest in a clover-field, flat on the ground. Bird 
students, be careful how you dispute the word of 
these sharp-eyed tillers of the soil ! 

But for birds that invariably choose old mother 
earth for the foundation of their houses, commend 
me to the American meadow-larks. In this respect 
they are certainly groundlings, though not in a bad 
sense. All their nests are constructed on the same 
general plan, it is true ; but the details are quite 
diverse, proving that architectural designs in the lark 



174 



IN BIRD LAND. 



guild of builders are almost as numerous as the 
builders themselves. My young farmer friend found 
a nest early in the spring, with not a blade of grass 
near it for protection, while the structure itself was 
arched over only a very little in the rear. Another 
nest was situated in a pasture, and was almost as 
devoid of roofing as was the first nest. But rather 
late in the spring a nest was found, hidden most 
deftly in the clover and plantain leaves, which were 
woven together in the most intricate manner so as 
to form a canopy over the cosey cot. At one side 
there was a tunnel, some two feet long, forming the 
only entrance to the apartment. The nest proper 
was arched over from the rear for fully one half its 
width. Not ten feet away was another lark's nest 
that was almost wholly exposed to the light and air. 
In the lark world there is evidently a good deal of 
room for originality. There seem to be many larks 
of many minds. 

My quest for cuckoos' nests during the summer 
of 1892 was well rewarded, but I shall stop to 
describe only one of these finds. The young birds 
having left, I lifted the nest from the swaying branch 
on which it hung, and examined it. The founda- 
tion was composed of twigs and sticks intertwined 
and plaited together with some degree of skill, but 
it was the lining that stirred my interest. First, it 
consisted of a number of dead forest leaves from 
which the cellular texture had been completely 
stripped, leaving only the petiole, midrib, and veins ; 
underneath this was a more compact carpet of the 



PHASES OF BIRD LIFE, I 75 

same kind of leaves, of which the blade, instead of 
being stripped off, was perforated with innumerable 
small holes, making them look like extremely fine 
sieves. In some cases the blades seemed to be 
split, leaving the veins and veinlets exposed, so that 
one could trace their intricate net-work. Another 
cuckoo nest had both the stripped and perforated 
leaves, but fewer of each kind. Whether the birds 
themselves did the artistic work on these leaves or 
not, — that is a question. The stripping of the 
upper layer of their blades would allow the dust and 
scaly substance shed by the young birds, to sift 
through to the second layer, where it would not 
come in direct contact with the nurslings. The 
two carpets were laid, no doubt, in the interests of 
health and cleanliness. 

But it is time to turn our attention to the children 
of the nursery. The life of young birds in the nest, 
— what a field for study ! One thing they learn 
very early, probably almost as soon as they emerge 
from the shell; that is, to open their mouths for 
food. No tutor or professor needed for that ! Most 
young birds soon become quite clamorous for their 
rations. Lowell must have looked into more than 
one bird nursery, or he scarcely would have thought 
of writing the lines, — 

" Blind nestlings, unafraid, 
Stretch up, wide-mouthed, to every shade 
By which their downy dream is stirred, 
Taking it for the mother-bird." 

A nestful of half- callow younglings, standing on 



176 IN BIRD LAND, 

tiptoe, craning up their necks, wabbling from side 
to side, opening their mouths to the widest extent 
of their ** gapes," knocking heads and beaks to- 
gether, and chirping at the top of their voices, — I 
confess it makes a picture more grotesque than 
attractive. By and by, as the pin-feathers begin to 
grow, the infant brood seem to feel an itching sen- 
sation, which causes them to pick the various parts 
of their bodies to remove the scaly substance that 
gathers on the skin and at the bases of the sprout- 
ing feathers. But how awkwardly they go about 
this exercise ! Their heads seem to be too heavy 
for their long, slender necks, and go waggling and 
rolling from side to side, often missing the mark 
aimed at. However, the muscles of the nurslings 
are developing all the while. Soon they lift them- 
selves to their full height, stretch themselves, jerk 
their tails higher than their heads in a most amusing 
way (you smile, but they don't), and then squat 
down upon the floor of the nest again. A day or so 
later the most advanced youngster feels the flying 
impulse stirring in his veins, and so, after stretching 
himself as previously described, he extends his wings 
to their utmost reach, and flaps them in a joyous 
way over his cuddling companions, sometimes rap- 
ping them smartly on the head. Soon there comes 
a day when he hops to the edge of the nest, looks 
out upon the wide, beckoning world like a young 
satrap, and flaps his wings with a semi-conscious 
feeling of strength. Ere long, encouraged by his 
parents, he spreads his wings, and takes a header 



PHASES OF BIRD LIFE. 177 

for the nearest twig. Why, his wings will bear him 
up on the buoyant air ! He has graduated from 
the nursery and the grammar grade into the high 
school. 

Every year has its eccentricities, so to speak; 
that is, the character of the weather and other 
modifying causes afford the faunal life an occasion 
for a development that is peculiar. Thus the 
observations made by the naturalist one year are not 
necessarily mere repetitions of those made other 
years. Nature is not often guilty of tautology. I 
yield therefore to the temptation to add a few 
chronicles made during the spring of 1893, which, 
I hope, will not destroy the unity of this article on 
bird nurseries. One day in June, while strolling 
through the woods, I heard the song of a red-eyed 
vireo. It was a kind of talking song, or recitative, 
as if the bird were discoursing on some favorite 
theme, and improvising his music as he went. His 
voice was so loud and clear that I could hear it far 
away, drifting through the green, embowered aisles 
of the woods. This vigorous chanson was a surprise, 
for I have never before known this vireo to remain 
in my neighborhood during the summer. He mostly 
hies farther north. But a still greater surprise lay 
in ambush for me a few days later, in one of my 
rambles through the woods. Suddenly there was a 
light flutter of wings near my head, and there hung 
a tiny nest on the low, swaying branches of a 
sapling. 

That it was a vireo's nest was evident, for it was 
12 



lyS IN BIRD LAND. 

fastened to the twigs by the rim, without any support 
below, swinging there hke a dainty basket. Pres- 
ently I got my glass on the bird herself, and found her 
to be a red-eyed vireo. That was my first nest of this 
species, and proud enough I was of the discovery. 
The outside of the little cot was prettily ornamented 
with tufts of spider-webs. As usual with this bird, a 
piece of white paper was wrought into the lower 
part of the nest. Three vireo's eggs and one cow- 
bunting's lay in the bottom of the cup. 

Every few days I called on the bird, going close 
enough only to see her plainly, without driving her 
off the nest. She made a pretty picture sitting 
there, one fit for an artist's brush, with her head 
and tail pointing almost straight up, her body grace- 
fully curved to fit the deep little basket, and her 
eyes growing large and wild at her visitor's approach. 
At length, one day, I felt sure there must be little 
ones in the nest, and so I went very close to her ; 
yet she did not fly. Then I moved my hand toward 
her, and finally touched her back before she flitted 
away. A featherless cow-bunting lay in the ham- 
mock, but the vireo's eggs were not yet hatched. 
A few days later the nest was robbed. Some heart- 
less villain, probably a blue jay, had destroyed all 
the children. I could have wept, so keen was my 
sense of bereavement. 

The cow-buntings imposed a great deal on other 
kind-hearted bird parents that spring. Almost every 
nest contained one or two of this interloper's eggs, 
and, as if Nature abetted the designs of the parasite, 



PHASES OF BIRD LIFE. I 79 

these eggs were almost always hatched first. One 
wood-thrush's nest contained two bunting and three 
thrush eggs. As soon as the bantlings had broken 
from the shell, the buntings could be readily dis- 
tinguished from the thrushes, for the former feath- 
ered much more rapidly than the latter. When the 
youngsters were about half grown, they crowded one 
another considerably in their adobe apartment, but, 
to all intents and purposes, they lived together in 
beautiful domestic harmony. At all events, no un- 
seemly family wrangles came under my eye. By 
and by, on one of my visits, I found that the bunt- 
ings had left the maternal roof (to speak with a 
good deal of poetic license), while the thrush trio 
still sat contentedly on the nest, and did not display 
any fear when I caressingly stroked their brown 
backs, but looked up at me in a na'ive, confiding 
way that was very gratifying. Quite different was 
the conduct of the inmates of a bush-sparrow's nest, 
hidden in the grass at the woodland's border. The 
baby sparrows rushed pell-mell from their pretty 
homestead when I came near, leaving a bunting, 
which had been hatched and reared with them, 
alone in the nest. He was not nearly so far 
developed as his brothers and sisters, and had no 
intention of being driven from home. 

But here is an instance more like that of the 
bunting- wood-thrush episode just described. A pretty 
basket, woven of fine fibrous material, swung from 
the lower branches of an apple-tree in the orchard 
of one of my farmer friends, and contained three 



l8o IN BIRD LAND. 

young orchard orioles and one cow-bunting. One 
day I procured a step-ladder and climbed up to the 
nest, when the bunting sprang out with a wild cry 
and toppled to the ground, while the young orioles, 
not yet half-fledged, merely pried open their mouths 
for food. Yet these birds, when grown, are fully as 
dexterous on the wing as their foster relatives, the 
buntings. 

During the same spring some observations on 
youthful blackbirds were made. They may be of 
sufficient interest to register in this place. Did you 
know that a part of the heads of infant blackbirds 
remains bare a week or two after the other por- 
tions of their bodies are well feathered? - This is 
true of the three species of my acquaintance, — 
the purple grackles, the red-winged blackbirds, and 
the cow-buntings. The bald portion includes the 
forehead, part of the crown, the chin, and throat, 
and extends behind and below the ears, which are 
covered with a tiny tuft of fuzz. Had this unfeathered 
portion been red instead of black, the youngsters 
would have looked quite like diminutive turkey- 
buzzards. One may be pardoned for being some- 
what puzzled over the childish conundrum. Why 
young blackbirds, of all the birds in the circle of 
one's acquaintance, must go bareheaded during the 
first few weeks of their life. By and by, however, 
the feathers grow out on this space as thickly as on 
the remainder of their bodies. 

Strange that I have found so few black-capped 
titmice's nests, familiar and abundant as they are 



PHASES OF BIRD LIFE, l8l 

in my neighborhood, both summer and winter ; but 
my quest was rewarded in two instances during the 
spring of 1893, — the first nest being in the top of 
a truncated sassafras-tree. The snag was perhaps 
twenty feet high. On one of my visits the birds 
were hollowing out their little apartment. They 
would dart into the narrow opening, and presently 
emerge, carrying small fragments of partly decayed 
wood in their beaks and dropping them to the 
ground. Some weeks later, I climbed the tree (with 
much fear and trembling, be it said), but the birds 
had made the cavity so deep that I could not see 
the bottom, and break open their sylvan nursery I 
would not. The second titmouse nest was in a 
very slender branch of a sassafras-tree, — so slender, 
indeed, that it was a wonder the birds were able to 
make a hollow in it. At first it looked precisely 
like a black patch burned on the bough's surface. 
When one of the feathered atoms stood in the tiny 
doorway and looked out, she made a pretty picture, 
— one that would have put a throb of joy into an 
artist's bosom. 

Yet there is another picture that I should prefer 
to have painted, not on account of its attractiveness, 
but on account of its quaintness ; it was the nest, 
eggs, and young of a pair of green herons in an 
orchard. The nest was built high in an apple-tree, 
and was only a loose platform of sticks. Although 
anything but an expert climber, I contrived to scale 
that tree three times to satisfy my curiosity. The 
first time there were four eggs of a greenish-blue 



1 82 IN BIRD LAND. 

cast — not jewels by any means — in the nest. On 
my second visit four of the oddest birdUngs I ever 
looked upon greeted me with wide-open eyes and 
mouths. They were covered with light yellowish 
down, and the space about the eyes was of a 
greenish hue, — one of the characteristic markings 
of the adult birds. When they opened their mouths, 
expecting to be fed, their throats puffed out some- 
what like the throats of croaking frogs, making a 
good-sized pocket inside to receive chunks of food. 
The thought struck me that perhaps the pocket was 
designed as a sort of temporary storage place for 
victuals until the nestling was ready to swallow them. 
The birds made a low, quaint noise that cannot be 
represented phonetically. Indeed, the picture they 
made was slightly uncanny, so 1 did not linger about 
it overlong. 

A week later my third and last call on the heron 
household was made. What an odd spectacle it 
presented ! The young birds had grown wonder- 
fully, though still covered with down, with very Httle 
sign of feathers. As my head appeared above the 
rim of the nest, they slowly craned up their India- 
rubber necks, then rose on their stilt-like legs, and 
looked at me w4th wondering, wide-open eyes that 
gleamed almost like gold. The spectacle made me 
think of ghouls, incongruous as the simile may seem. 
When I touched one of the birds, it huddled, 
half-alarmed, down to the bottom of the nest. An- 
other slyly stalked off to the edge of the platform, 
upon a thick clump of twigs and leaves, eying me 



PHASES OF BIRD LIFE. 183 

keenly as he moved away. I hurriedly climbed 
down, lest he should topple to the ground and dash 
himself to death ; and thus, while I was on the brink 
of causing a tragedy, yet, as a sort of emollient to 
my conscience, I consoled myself with the thought 
that I had really prevented one. 

Another interesting discovery of the same spring 
was a killdeer plover's nest, w^hich my farmer friend 
across-lots found in a clover-field. There had been 
a heavy rainfall, making the ploughed ground as soft 
as mush ; but my tall rubber boots were mud-proof, 
and so I went to pay the plovers my respects. This 
was after six o'clock in the evening. I found one 
little bird in the shallow, pebble-lined nest, and 
three eggs, one of them slightly broken at the larger 
end. The plover nestling was an odd baby, with 
its large head, fluffy, square- shouldered body, and 
slender beak sticking straight out. A small piece of 
the egg-shell still clung to its back. On taking the 
tiny thing into my hand, what was this I saw ? It 
had only three toes on each foot, instead of four, as 
most birds have ; and those three were all fore toes^ 
while the bird had no hind toe at all. Why the 
plover should have no hind toe is an enigma ; but 
then, the ostrich has none, either, and only two in 
front, — ^^ every species after its kind." 

Early the next morning two more youngsters had 
broken shell, and come forth to keep their more 
precocious brother company. The eldest was marked 
quite distinctly about the head and neck like its 
parents, having the characteristic white and black 



1 84 IN BIRD LAND. 

bands, thus early proclaiming the persistence of its 
type. When I set it down — for I had lifted it in 
my hand — it started to run over the soft ground, , 
enhancing its speed by flapping its tiny wings. The 
picture was indescribably cunning. The bird was so 
small that it looked like a downy dot scudding over 
the undulations of the ground. Think of a baby 
only about fifteen hours old running away from 
home in that manner ! I caught the infantile scape- 
grace and placed it back in its cradle, where it 
remained. During the night there had been a very 
heavy fall of rain, and yet these youngsters, small as 
they were, had not been drowned, having doubtless 
been covered by their parents. At six o'clock in 
the evening they had all left the nest, and, search as 
I would, I could find no clew to their whereabouts, 
though the parent birds were flying and scuttling 
about with loud cries of warning to me to keep my 
distance. Thus it would seem that young plovers, 
like young partridges, grouse, and ducks, leave the 
nest at a very tender age. 

Before closing, I must mention something odd 
that befell a kingfisher's nest. A year prior I had 
found a nest in a high bank in a sloping field, where 
the water had washed out a deep gully. In passing 
the bank one day I noticed that it had been partly 
broken down ; there had been a landslide on a smiall 
scale, caused by the washing of the heavy spring 
rains. Half way to the top, on a narrow shelf, lay a 
clutch of kingfisher's eggs, some of them broken by 
the caving of the bank. The landslide had occurred 



PHASES OF BIRD LIFE, 185 

after the cavity had been made and the eggs de- 
posited, thus blasting the hopes of the kingfishers. 
However, they had not become despondent, for, 
later in the season, they burrowed a hole for an 
underground nursery in another part of the bank. 



III. 

BIRD HIGH SCHOOLS. 

It is not to be supposed that there is a regularly 
graded system of instruction in the school-life of 
the birds. There may be method in their learning, 
but it would be difficult to state positively just where 
the primary, grammar, high-school, and college grades 
merge into one another, or when diplomas of effi- 
ciency are granted, if granted at all. But that there 
is something of a system of pedagogy among birds, 
and that the juniors do receive instruction from their 
seniors, no observer of feathered life can doubt for 
a moment. In the systems of human instruction 
the child-life of the young learner usually ends with 
his high-school course ; he then stands at the thresh- 
old of young manhood, ready to do a good deal of 
wrestling with his problems on his own account. 
Taking that fact as our cue, we should say that the 
high-school instruction of the youthful bird begins 
when he leaves the nest, and ends when he is able 
to fly with dexterity, and provide for his own sup- 
port, at least in the main. It is not probable that 
the lecture system prevails in the bird community, 



1 86 IN BIRD LAND. 

or the method of class mstruction now in vogue, or 
that books and charts and blackboards are used ; 
but the instruction is chiefly individual, and is carried 
on mostly by example, coercion, and urgent appeal. 
There is not an inexhaustible number of branches 
to be pursued by the little undergraduates in plumes ; 
but their efforts at obtaining an education consist 
chiefly in mastering three grand accomplishments, 
— flying, feeding, and singing. 

If ever you have seen a bevy of young red-headed 
woodpeckers, led by several of their elders, taking 
their wing- exercises, choosing a certain tree in the 
woods for a point of departure, and then sailing 
around and around with loud cries of delight, you 
must have concluded that it was a veritable class in 
calisthenics. One seldom has an opportunity to 
see young birds taking their first lessons in flight, 
but it is worth one's time and patience to be present 
at such a recitation. The parents set the example 
by flying from the nest to a perch near by, and then 
coax and scold their children to follow their ex- 
ample. If the little learners hesitate, as they usually 
do, their impatient teachers exclaim : *^ Why, just try it 
once. You never will learn to fly any younger. If 
you will only spread your wings, let go of the rim 
of the nest, and venture out on the air, you will find 
that it will bear you up. Don't be afraid." But 
perhaps the pupils complain that it makes their 
heads dizzy to look down from their awful height. 
Then the teachers pooh-pooh at their fears, and cry 
condescendingly, '■^ The idea of being afraid ! Why, 



PHASES OF BIRD LIFE. 187 

just see here 1 " and they mount up into the air, 
poise, careen, and perform other extraordinary feats, 
while the youngsters gaze at them in wide-eyed 
wonder. At last, after much persuasion and many 
half-attempts, one of the youngsters spreads his 
pinions and flutters laboriously until he scrambles 
upon the nearest twig, with bated breath and throb- 
bing pulses. He is frightened half to death, but he 
has found that the friendly air will support him if he 
makes proper use of his wings, and so he will soon 
make another effort, and another, until he begins 
really to enjoy the exercise. However, several days 
may elapse before the youngest and weakest member 
of the class can muster sufficient courage to take his 
first aerial journey. 

Some species of birds graduate from the nest 
much sooner than others. In one case I observed 
that a family of goldfinches remained in the nest 
just seven days after a family of bush-sparrows, 
hatched on the same day, had taken their flight.^ 
The yellow-billed cuckoo has given me no little 
surprise in this respect. When he first creeps out 
of his shell apartment, he is a callow, ungainly in- 
fant, black as coal, with a sparse covering of stiff 
bristles ; but almost before a week has passed, he 
has hopped from his washed-out cradle to try the 
realities of the great world around him. Why the 
agile little goldfinch should remain in the crib so 
much longer than his less dexterous fellow-pupil, 

1 This episode is referred to in the chapter on " Nest- 
Hunting." 



1 88 IN BIRD LAND. 

the cuckoo, is a problem of bird school-life that 
I must leave for solution to wiser heads. 

Having gone from the nest, the young bird has 
not yet learned all about the art of flying; no, 
indeed ! He must become perfect by practice. 
Many a blunder will he make. Kt first he can- 
not always nicely calculate the distance to the twig 
that he has in view, and so he fails to give himself 
the proper propulsive force ; he misses his footing 
by going too far, or not far enough, and then where 
he will alight is a question of what he happens to 
strike first. Probably a wild, desperate scramble will 
ensue, which ends only when the youthful novice has 
fallen plump upon the ground. He may be very 
much alarmed ; but as soon as he recovers his 
breath, his courage rises, and he tries again. 

Although the young birds have the whole world 
for their larder, with victuals just to their taste 
constantly at their elbow, they must learn even the 
art of eating, and, until they do so, they demand that 
their parents be their caterers. For several weeks 
after they have passed the first term of school-life, 
they will still sit on a limb, open their mouths, 
twinkle their wings, and allow their patient victual- 
lers to thrust morsel after morsel down their 
throats. My opinion is that the patience of their 
parents wears out after a time, and they leave 
the overgrown youngster to paddle for himself. 
How proud he must be of the exploit when he 
catches his first insect and successfully stows it away 
in his maw ! In a deep, quiet glen I watched a 



PHASES OF BIRD LIFE. 189 

family of young phoebes and their parents catching 
insects on the wing. It was amusing. The old 
birds evidently felt that it was about time for their 
pupils to learn to provide their own victuals, but 
the youngsters stoutly demanded that their lunch- 
eons be brought them in the accustomed manner. 
They must have noticed that the old birds would 
occasionally catch an insect and dispose of it them- 
selves. Once when the parent bird darted out for 
a small cabbage butterfly, a young fellow swooped 
down at her with such force that she let the insect 
squirm out of her bill and flutter to the ground, 
and thus make good its escape before she could re- 
cover it. Both birds lost their dinner through the 
greed and rashness of the little gourmand. Another 
time an old bird caught a yellow butterfly, dashed 
to a limb, and quickly gulped it down, wings and all, 
before any of the presumptuous high- schoolers could 
reach him. The bearing of the bird was most 
laughable. Finally, several of the young birds darted 
out into the air for passing insects, proving that they 
were taking lessons in that fine art ; but their gym- 
nastics were far from perfect, and they hit the mark 
scarcely half the time. 

With most young birds music is a part of their 
high-school curriculum. Perhaps you have thought 
that they learn their lessons in vocal music without 
special instruction, but this is not always the case. 
Observation proves that the old birds have them 
under tutelage, setting them lyrical copies, which 
they are expected to learn by frequent rehearsal. 



190 IN BIRD LAND. 

I have myself observed such a performance in the 
case of the wood-pewee, as described in the chapter 
on '* Midsummer Melodies." First attempts are 
crude and awkward, although the tones may be very 
fine. It requires frequent drill to bring the vocal 
organs under perfect control, just as is the case with 
human singers. If you have Hstened to the squeak- 
ing, chattering, twittering medley of young song- 
sparrows, you have realized how much practice 
is necessary before the would-be vocalists will be 
able to execute the wonderful trills of which they 
are master when they graduate from the musical 
conservatory. 

I must tell you of a little bird high-school class 
over which I once assumed charge. It consisted 
of three wood-thrushes, two bluebirds, and a 
brown thrasher, all of which were taken from the 
nest before they were ready to fly, and confined in 
a large wire cage. Very soon they learned to take 
food from my hand. But in many things that are 
essential to bird life and bird weal they had no 
tutors and no drill -masters, and therefore had to 
learn them as best they could. Yet it was surpris- 
ing how soon they gained proficiency. Without a 
single copy from adult birds, all of them were able 
to fly about from perch to perch in a few days. It 
was not more than a week before they began to pick 
in an awkward way, but after more than five weeks 
they would still open their mouths and take food 
from the hand. The mechanical act of eating was 
something they had to learn by slow degrees. While 



PHASES OF BIRD LIFE. 191 

they could readily pick up a tidbit, it seemed to 
be a difficult task to get it back far enough into the 
mouth to swallow it. This was especially true of 
the thrasher, whose bill was long. How he would 
toss a morsel about, pinch it, fling it away, catch it 
up again, and pound it against a perch, before he 
could work it back into his capacious throat ! 

They were amusing pets, those feathered pupils 
of mine. From them I have gained an insight into 
bird character which could have been gained in no 
other way. The difficulty in observing birds in the 
wild state is, you cannot study them at close range, 
and hence cannot watch their development from 
day to day. None the less interesting were my 
little pupils because they had to depend on their 
own wits and learn their lessons without a pedagogue. 
How did they learn to bathe without being shown 
how ! They learned it, that is sure ; and they went 
through the exercise precisely as birds do in the wild- 
wood. They would leap into the bath-dish, duck 
their heads into the water, flutter their wings and 
tails until thoroughly rinsed, and then fly up to a 
perch to preen their bedrenched plumage. But they 
made some mirth-provoking blunders. One day a 
wood- thrush got astride of the rim of his bath-tub, one 
leg outside and the other inside, and in that interest- 
ing position tried to take his ablution. He looked 
exceedingly droll, and seemingly could not under- 
stand why he did not succeed better. Another time 
the thrasher remained outside of the bath-dish, and 
thrust his head over the rim into the \vater, squat- 



192 IN BIRD LAND. 

ting on the sand and twinkling his pinions. But the 
time came when all the birds discovered of their 
own accord that the proper way was to leap right 
into the lavatory. 

How early in life do juvenile birds begin to sing? 
That is a question, I venture to say, that very few 
students of bird life would be able to answer. It 
may be difficult to believe — if my own ears had 
not heard, I should be very skeptical of the accuracy 
of the assertion — but my wood-thrushes had not 
been in my care more than three or four weeks 
before one of them began to twitter a little song. 
He could not have been much more than five weeks 
old. This is all the more remarkable when it is 
remembered that there were no adult thrushes within 
a half-mile of the house. He seemed to discover 
that he had a voice, and thought he might as well 
use it. 

Ah, yes, and sad to relate, my high-school pupils 
soon learned to quarrel, and that without the 
example of their elders. When I threw a billsome 
morsel on the floor of the cage, several of them 
would make a dive for it, and soon get into a 
wrangle. " It 's mine ! it 's mine ! " each would 
proclaim by his greedy behavior. Then perhaps 
two would seize it, and tug at it like boys fighting for 
an apple. Or if one contrived to get it first, the rest 
would try to wrench it from his beak, and thus 
they would pursue one another about in a wild chase. 
The thrasher, being younger than his fellows, was 
for a time cheated out of every choice morsel he 



PHASES OF BIRD LIFE. 193 

secured ; but he finally learned to help himself and 
swallow his victuals instanter. Two of the thrushes, 
probably males, seemed to have a mutual grudge. 
They would pursue each other until the fugitive 
would turn and stand at bay, snapping his mandi- 
bles in a savage manner, as if they were worked by 
steel springs. I regret being compelled to pubHsh 
these pugnacious tendencies in my beloved pets ; but 
I prefer giving a realistic rather than a fictitious or 
roseate sketch of the school-days of these pupils in 
plumes, 

IV. 

BIRD WORK. 

^^LiFE is real, life is earnest," might be just as 
truly said of ^^ our httle brothers of the air" as of 
us, their big brothers of the soil. If you think that 
their whole career consists of nothing but play and 
song and bounding joy, you have seen very little 
of the bird Hfe around you. For the mother bird, at 
least, the whole period of nesting, sometimes extend- 
ing over several months, is a time of drudgery, 
anxiety, and, far too often, of disappointed hopes. 
I have heard a bird mother's wail that went like 
iron into my soul, and told me all too plainly that 
it had come from a bereft and broken heart. When 
we remember how many tragedies occur in the 
feathered community, we scarcely care about sing- 
ing, ^' I wish I were a little bird." Had you 
witnessed the unutterable agony of a pair of yellow- 

13 



194 ^^ ^^^^ LAND. 

breasted chats one spring, when their four pretty 
bairns were stolen by some heartless buccaneer, you 
would have thanked the Pleiades, Ursa Major, Ursa 
Minor, and all your other lucky stars, that you were 
a man or woman and not a bird. 

*' Oh ! it would be so pleasant to fly and tilt in 
the air, to dash from twig to twig, to make long 
aerial voyages to foreign countries 1 '* Do I hear 
you say that? Wait a moment. Have you ever 
thought that even the long, bounding flight of the 
swallows and swifts, accomplished apparently with- 
out effort, may sometimes become a weariness to 
the flesh, especially when insects are scarce and 
their maws empty? Then, those long nocturnal 
journeys that birds make during the migrating season 
may often tax their strength to the utmost. Indeed, 
if you will listen to their feeble chirping, as they 
sweep overhead through the darkness, you will often 
detect a note of fatigue running through it, as much 
as to say, ^' Ah, I wish we were at our journey's 
end ! '* No, bird life is not all roseate. It has its 
humdrum and drudgery, its wear and tear, its prose 
as well as its poetry, its hard realism as well as its 
romance. 

One of the tasks of bird life is the building of 
nests. It is true, the birds always do this work with 
a zest that makes it seem lialf play ; but, after spend- 
ing a day in gathering material and weaving it into 
the nest, scarcely taking time to stop for meals, I 
have no doubt the little toilers are ready to retire 
when bedtime comes. Have you ever watched these 



PHASES OF BIRD LIFE. 195 

little artists constructing their nests? They first lay 
the foundation, which is usually made of rather 
coarse material, and is more or less loosely woven ; 
and then they proceed to build the superstructure. 
Some birds, like the robin and the bluebird, will have 
their mouths full of material every time they come 
to the nest ; while others, such as the dainty warblers, 
will return with a single fibre. Usually the bird 
leaps into the cup of the nest, and deftly weaves in 
the new material with its bill ; and then shifts around 
with a quivering motion of body and wings, to give 
the structure proper shape and size. The nest must 
be made to fit the body of the bird like a glove, so 
that she may rest easily in it during the long period 
of incubation. The robin and the wood-thrush bring 
mud and clay ; this they mix, no doubt, with their 
own saliva, which gives it its viscid character. The 
dainty, blue-gray gnat-catcher collects lichens of 
various kinds, with which she decorates the high 
walls of her compact little cottage. Does this tiny 
artist sometimes build nests just for fun or aesthetic 
effect ? I watched the building of two nests one spring 
that were never used. With what a graceful touch 
the feathered dots laid the hchen bricks in the walls ! 
The hatching of the eggs must be a severe tax on 
the patience of the mother bird, for the principal 
part of this work devolves upon her. Sitting hour 
by hour upon the nest, looking out upon the wide 
spaces of air waiting to be conquered by her active 
wings ; with nothing except hope to feed her mind ; 
with not even a book or a newspaper to read, — 



196 IN BIRD LAND. 

well, here is a chance to let patience have her pet- 
feet work. Then think of her uneasirtess at the 
approach of every foe. It is work j it is not mere 
idleness. As for her lord, it may seem only hke 
holiday sport to sit in the tree-top and sing all the 
livelong day, to beguile the weary hours of his sit- 
ting mate. But perhaps it often takes on the hue 
of work, too, when singing becomes a duty. Small 
wonder, if the choralist's vocal chords often become 
jaded and sore, while there may be danger of bring- 
ing on throat or lung trouble. Besides, he must 
often carry a dainty morsel to his spouse when he 
would much prefer to eat it himself. Then, he 
must take his turn on the nest while his partner 
goes off for a '^ constitutional " to get the stiffness 
out of her joints, or gathers a relay of food and 
preens her rufPied plumes. 

One of the most unpleasant tasks of the time of 
incubation and brood rearing is the warding off of 
enemies. And they are numerous. No feathered 
parents can feel sure that they shall be able to tide 
their little family safely over this perilous period. 
Have you ever seen the plucky wood-pewee engag- 
ing in a contest with that highwayman in feathers, 
the blue jay? How he dashes at the bloodthirsty 
villain, snapping his mandibles viciously at every 
onset, and sometimes pecking a feather from his 
enemy's back ! Nor will he give up the battle until 
the jay steals off with a hangdog expression on his 
face. The little warbling vireo is no less game when 
the jay comes too near his precincts. 



PHASES OF BIRD LIFE. 197 

One day in spring I was witness to a curious inci- 
dent. A red-headed woodpecker had been flying 
several times in and out of a hole in a tree where 
he (or she) had a nest. At length, when he re- 
mained within the cavity for some minutes, I stepped 
to the tree and rapped on the trunk with my cane. 
The bird bolted like a small cannon-ball from the 
orifice, wheeled around the tree with a swiftness 
that the eye could scarcely follow, and then dashed 
up the lane to an orchard a short distance away. 
But he had only leaped out of the frying-pan into 
the fire. In the orchard he had unconsciously got 
too near a king-bird's nest. The king-bird swooped 
toward him, and alighted on his back. The next 
moment the two birds, the king-bird on the wood- 
pecker's back, went racing across the meadow like 
a streak of zigzag lightning, making a clatter that 
frightened every echo from its hiding-place. That 
gamy flycatcher actually clung to the woodpecker's 
back until he reached the other end of the meadow. 
I cannot be sure, but he seemed to be holding to 
the woodpecker's dorsal feathers with his bill. 
Then, bantam fellow that he was, he dashed back 
to the orchard with a loud chippering of exultation. 
" Ah, ha ! " he flung across to the blushing wood- 
pecker ; " stay away the next time, if you don't 
fancy being converted into a beast of burden ! " 

A large part of a bird's toil, after there are chil- 
dren in the nest, consists in providing victuals for 
them. For this purpose the whole country around 
must be scoured, and sometimes long journeys must 



igS ^^ BIRD LAND. 

be made. I have watched a kingfisher flying again 
and again from a winding creek in the valley to her 
nest on a hillside nearly a half-mile distant, with a 
minnow in her bill, while the sun was pouring a 
sweltering deluge upon the fields. It kept her busy 
every moment to supply the imperious demands of 
her hungry brood in the bank. K common field- 
bird, which I watched one day for a long while, 
would often return to her nest every minute with an 
insect. Many, many times have I obeyed Lowell's 
injunction, — 

" Come up and feel what health there is 
In the frank Dawn's delighted eyes, 
As. bending with a pitying kiss, 

The night-shed tears of Earth she dries." 

But even at that early hour the feathered toilers 
have always been ahead of the human wage-workers 
in beginning the labors of the day. The nestlings 
must have a twilight breakfast; and then, in the 
evening, as long as the gloaming lasts, they noisily 
demand just one more mouthful for supper. 

Young birds are ravenous feeders. They seem 
to live to eat, and have no thought of eating to live. 
For an hour and a half, one August day, I kept 
watch of a nestful of bantlings, and during that 
time the parent birds were so shy that they fed 
their infants only twice. At last the little things 
became fairly desperate for food, springing up in 
the nest and opening their mouths with pitiful cries 
every time the breeze stirred the bushes about them. 



PHASES OF BIRD LIFE. 199 

They were so famished that I hurried away lest they 
should go to preying on one another, for they would 
sometimes greedily seize one another by the bills or 
heads, and try to gobble one another down. Inci- 
dents like this prove that the old birds must be on 
the jump every moment to procure a sufficient sup- 
ply of food for their young. Even after they have 
left the nest, the juvenile members of the family 
must be fed for several weeks. As long as mamma 
and papa will get their luncheons for them, they will 
make little effort to help themselves. I have seen 
the dainty little accentor feeding a great, overgrown 
mossback of a cow-bunting, which had to ^^juke" 
down to her like a giant to a dwarf to receive the 
morsel she offered him. What a drudgery it must 
have been to collect, victuals enough to fill his 
capacious maw ! Think of a toil-worn, care-fretted 
little mother feeding a strapping boy that will not 
work ! ' 

Moreover, adult birds often are kept busy for 
hours supplying their own craving for food. One 
April day a hooded warbler, natty little beau, near 
an old gravel-bank in the woods, was watched by 
me for an hour and a half. During that time he 
must have caught an insect almost every minute, 
and sometimes no sooner had he gulped down one 
than he made a swift dash for another. Had he 
not been so very, very handsome, I should have 
dubbed him a gourmand. 

At certain seasons of the year what an active life 
the red-headed woodpeckers are compelled to lead, 



200 IN BIRD LAND. 

in order to satisfy the demands of their stomachs ! 
With intervals of scarcely more than a few seconds, 
they bound out from a perch, seize an insect on 
the wing, and wheel back again. For hours this 
half work, half frolic is kept up. By the way, al- 
most all birds sometimes engage in this flycatcher 
game of taking their prey on the wing. The Balti- 
more orioles, the bluebirds, the yellow-belHed wood- 
peckers, the crested tits, the chippies, the indigo- 
birds, and even the white-breasted nuthatches and 
English sparrows, to say nothing of many species of 
warblers, catch insects in this way. 

Many birds have to '^ scratch for a living," and 
that in a literal sense. There is the towhee bunt- 
ing, for example. Instead of getting down on his 
breast, however, like the hen or the partridge, he 
stretches himself up on his legs as if they were stilts, 
and then bobs up and down in an amusing fashion, 
while he scatters leaves and dirt to side and rear. 
I do not know whether the robins scratch or not, 
but they often jerk the leaves from the ground with 
their bills, and hurl them away with a half- disdain- 
ful air. Several young wood-thrushes kept in a 
cage removed obstructions in the same way. 

Even the merry bobolink, the Beau Brummel of 
our meadows and clover-fields, cannot spend every 
day 

" Untwisting all the chains that tie 
The hidden soul of harmony ; " 

for the time comes when he must do the work of a 
staid husband and father, and help to take care of 



PHASES OF BIRD LIFE, 201 

the growing brood. With all his pirouetting in the 
air, he carries in his bosom an anxious heart, as you 
will quickly see if you go too near his snuggery in 
the grass. The wild scramble in which birds of all 
kinds often have to engage, in order to secure a 
refractory insect, proves that there is ample room 
for the play of their best energies. Thus we see 
that the birds have plenty to do besides rollicking, 
singing, enjoying gala- days, and taking excursions 
to gay watering-places. Like their human brothers 
and sisters, they must toil patiently on " through 
the every-dayness of this work-day world." They, 
too, may have their literature — unwritten, however 
— on the '^ dignity of labor." 



V. 

BIRD PLAY. 

How strange it is that animals never laugh ! If 
you watch a group of monkeys playing their antics, 
you will find their faces as sedate as a judge's, save, 
perhaps, a merry twinkle of the eye. Comical as 
their gambols are, one would think they would break 
into convulsions of merriment. True, animals have 
various ways of giving vent to their exuberant feel- 
ings, but this is done very slightly by means of facial 
expression. Their risibles must be meagrely devel- 
oped. What has been said in regard to animals in 
general is also true of birds, whose eyes often 
twinkle and are intensely expressive, but whose 



2 02 IN BIRD LAND. 

countenances proper reveal very little of the emo- 
tion swelling in their breasts. 

Yet by the movements of their bodies you can 
easily read their feelings. You can tell at a glance 
by the conduct of a bird whether or not it is alarmed 
at your presence, or whether it is engaged in a frolic 
or in watching a wily foe. How different is the 
behavior of most birds in the breeding-season, with 
a nest near at hand, from their demeanor at other 
times ! Look at that brown thrasher perched in a 
tree-top on a spring morning, singing his paean to 
the surrounding woodland, and notice how fearless 
he appears. Contrast his manners two months 
later when he goes skulking through the tanglewood, 
afraid to be seen. Conceal their secret as they 
may, an expert student of birds can almost always 
tell if there is a nest in the neighborhood. 

It is, therefore, by their conduct rather than by 
their facial expression that birds reveal their love of 
play. That they do have their frolics, no one can 
doubt. Much of their time is occupied in labor, 
and that often of the most serious, if not arduous, 
kind, and they frequently combine toil and play ; 
but there are times when they seem to give them- 
selves up to unmixed sportiveness. There is not 
much system in their games, so far as I have ob- 
served. They mostly engage in frolics of a rough- 
and-tumble kind, for the pure love of the fun, and 
perhaps with no thought of winning a prize. 

It is possible, however, that the company of red- 
headed woodpeckers I watched one day in the 



PHASES OF BIRD LIFE, 203 

woods were having a genuine flying-race. One tree 
was selected as a point of departure, from which 
they would start and fly around in a wide circle, — 
perhaps their race-track, — always returning to the 
same tree with loud chattering, which sounded like 
shouts of applause. This exercise they kept up for 
hours, always starting from the same tree and de- 
scribing nearly the same circle. If it was not a 
contest of speed, I am at a loss to know what it 
was. 

The woodpeckers, especially the youngsters, have 
another game that has a decidedly human flavor ; it 
is the game of bo-peep among the trunks and 
branches of trees. A red-head will shy off from his 
companions, conceal himself somewhere behind a 
tree-trunk, and then peep from his hiding-place in 
an exquisitely comical way, until he is espied by 
some sharp-eyed fellow- frolicker. A vigorous chase 
will follow, as pursuer and pursued dash wildly away 
among the trees. Sometimes, when the fugitive is 
too hotly pursued, he will stop and keep his com- 
panion at bay by presenting his long, spearlike bill 
as a sort of bayonet. 

Another tree-climber is the brown creeper. I 
have described many of his pranks in the first 
chapter of this volume. One November day I wit- 
nessed a performance that beats the record. Two 
creepers were hitching up the trunks of the trees in 
their characteristic manner, when one of them sud- 
denly dropped straight down about fifteen feet, 
scarcely more than an inch from the trunk of the 



204 IN BIRD LAND. 

tree ; then, instead of alighting, he darted straight 
up again the same distance, fluttered a moment 
uncertainly on the wing, and then dropped again to 
the foot of the tree, where he alighted, and resumed 
his upward march. But that was not all. Presently 
his companion, not to be outdone, began to whirl 
around and around the tree, descending in a spiral 
course until he reached the foot. There he tarried 
a moment to take breath, and then, much to my 
surprise, whirled himself up in the same way, a dis- 
tance of perhaps twenty feet, accomplishing it in 
four or five revolutions. But, as if to distance all 
creepers' pranks ever witnessed before, he descended 
again in the same spiral course. These - perform- 
ances can be interpreted only as ways in which to 
give vent to the spirit of frolic in the creeper 
nature. 

On the same day my dancing dot in feathers, the 
golden-crowned kinglet, performed one of his favor- 
ite tricks, which is not often described in the books. 
You will remember that in the centre of the yellow 
crown-patch of the males, there is a gleaming golden 
speck, visible only when you look at him closely. 
But when the little beau is in a particularly rollick- 
some mood, or wants to display his gem to his mate 
or kindred, he elevates and spreads out the feathers 
of his crest, and lo ! a transformation. The whole 
crown becomes golden 1 That gleaming speck ex- 
pands until it completely hides the yellow and black 
of the crown. It has been my good fortune on 
several occasions to see the ruby-crowned kinglet 



PHASES OF BIRD LIFE. 205 

transfigure himself in the same way, except that his 
entire crown became ruby. Probably the little 
Chesterfield that can exhibit the most brilliant coro- 
nal wins the sweetest damsel in the kinglet commu- 
nity for a wifie. 

Perhaps, as a rule, our winter birds find the 
season rather cold for play ; yet they often frolic in 
the snow like children, even when they do not stalk 
through it in quest of food. This is especially true 
of the snow-birds and tree-sparrows. Birds are 
especially fond of splashing in water. Even in the 
winter-time, when it flows ice-cold into the stream 
or pond from the melting snow on the banks, certain 
birds will plunge into it, and enjoy their bath for 
many minutes. They do not seem to be satisfied 
with merely wetting their plumes, but remain in the 
water, twinkling their wings and tails, much longer 
than is actually necessary. Several times in the 
autumn I have seen a large company of warblers of 
different species taking a bath in a woodland pond. 
How they enjoyed their ablutions ! Again and 
again they would return to the water, as if loath to 
quit it. 

To my mind, the flicker is one of our most playful 
birds, spite of his staid looks. I have seen a half- 
dozen of these birds on a single tree, scudding 
about after one another and calling, Zwick-ah ! 
zwick-ah I in their affectionate way. Not infre- 
quently two of them will face each other, and begin 
bowing in a vigorous style, turning their heads dex- 
terously from side to side to avoid collision. This 



2o6 IN BIRD LAND. 

is sometimes kept up for several minutes. It is very 
comical, the only drawback being that the birds 
themselves do not laugh. Why they should engage 
in so ridiculous a performance with so serious an air, 
is a problem that still belongs to the unknown. 

A cut-throat finch, a pet, was, as a rule, a very 
sedate little body, but one day he had to come 
down from his pedestal to get rid of his surplus of 
feeling. This he did by dancing a sort of jig to his 
own music, swaying his body to and fro in a most 
laughable way. On another day an English sparrow 
flew upon his cage, which was hanging on the veranda^ 
when ^' Pompey " turned his head toward his visitor, 
burst into song, and bobbed his head from side to 
side. No doubt the sparrow felt that he was receiv- 
ing an ovation. 

A most laughable incident occurred one day in 
my large cage of birds. ^' Flip," a fine young wood- 
thrush, was rehearsing his song. A young thrasher 
leaped up beside him on the perch. The two birds 
turned their heads to each other, and looked into each 
other's eyes a moment ; then Fhp opened his mouth 
at his visitor, and broke into song, the tones coming 
right out of his gold-lined throat. All the while he 
jerked his head from side to side or up and down in 
perfect time with his music, his eye gleaming intelli- 
gently, as if he enjoyed the fun. Even my loud out- 
burst of laughter did not put a stop to the little farce. 
Flip was a bright bird. He afterward had a cage 
all to himself, and regaled his hosts with many a 
cheerful song, such as only the wood-thrush is master 



PHASES OF BIRD LIFE, 207 

of. Occasionally he would leap to the end of his 
cage, open his mouth wide at '^ Brownie," whose 
cage stood next to his, and sing a comic song; at 
least, it seemed comic. 

These incidents, although they do not prove that 
birds have elaborate games, do prove that they pos- 
sess the play spirit, and no doubt their pastimes and 
amusements are relished fully as much by them as 
ours are by us; perhaps more so. 



VI. 



BIRD DEATHS. 

If only some master dramatist could write the 
tragedies of bird land ! They would be highly 
exciting, and would afford ample room for the play 
of geniu-s; for there are adventures and disasters 
without number. Perhaps it is on account of the 
many reverses that there is so often a pensive strain 
in the songs of the birds, — a minor chord running 
like a shimmering silver line through the weft of 
the woodland music. Robert Burns, in his '^ Address 
to a Woodlark," touched the very marrow of bird 
sadness, and pleaded with the little singer to cease 
its song, or he himself would go distracted, — 

" Say, was thy little mate unkind, 
And heard thee as the careless wind ? 
Oh ! nocht but love and sorrow joined 
Sic notes o' wae could wauken. 



2 08 IN BIRD LAND. 

"Thou tells o' never-ending care, 
O' speechless grief and dark despair ; 
For pity's sake, sweet bird, nae mair ! 
Or my poor heart is broken." 

If Coleridge had studied the birds more care- 
fully, and acquainted himself with their griefs, he 
never would have written, in mockery of Milton's 
"UAllegro," — 

*' A melancholy bird ! O, idle thought ! 
In nature there is nothing melancholy ! " 

I have seen a pair of birds whose little brood had 
just been cruelly slaughtered, and my heart bled for 
them when I saw that their anguish was .too great 
for expression. Perhaps birds that have been be- 
reaved soon forget their sorrow, and yet I doubt it ; 
for if you listen to the minor treble of the black- 
capped chickadee, you cannot help feeling that he is 
singing a dirge for some long-lost love, or, if not 
that, may be recounting, by some occult law of 
heredity, the story of the many sorrows of his ances- 
tors from the beginning down to his own generation. 
What ravishing sadness there is in the songs of the 
white-throated and white-crowned sparrows ! The 
bluebird is always sighing as he shifts from post to 
post, and nothing could be more melancholy than 
the call of the jay in autumn. The crow at a dis- 
tance complains of his disappointment, while the 
wood-thrush, in his evening and morning voluntaries, 
rehearses the sad memories of his life. Keats speaks 
of the "plaintive anthem" of the nightingale^ and 



PHASES OF BIRD LIFE, 209 

Thomson declares that even the merry linnets ^^ lit 
on the dead tree, a dull, despondent flock.'* 

It would be difficult to arrange a ^^ table of mor- 
tality " for the birds. However, as they know noth- 
ing about life insurance, there is no call for such a 
compilation ; but even if the statistician could state 
the number of deaths, there is no arithmetic that 
could compute the heartaches and heartbreaks expe- 
rienced by ^^ our little brothers of the air." "In 
the midst of life we are in death," might well be put 
into the litany of the birds. If they had burial- 
grounds, there would be plenty of employment for 
the sexton and some grave " Old Mortality." 

The elements themselves sometimes play sad havoc 
with the birds. Mr. Eldridge E. Fish, of Buffalo, 
N. Y., tells of an October storm in which many 
golden-crowned kinglets were dashed to the ground, 
while others flew against windows of houses in which 
lights were left burning. The storm was so severe 
that the little voyagers, travelling southward by night, 
were compelled to alight, and thus many of them 
were destroyed. The same writer speaks of a cold 
rain which froze as it fell, coating everything with 
ice, and thus cutting off the birds' supply of food, so 
that many bluebirds perished. To my certain know- 
ledge, robins, which breed very early in the spring, 
sometimes are frozen to death while hugging their 
nests, when a cold wave swoops from the north. 
The same calamity sometimes overtakes the cross- 
bill during the winter in the forests of Canada. 
Apparently even Nature herself is not always a tender 

14 



2IO IN BIRD LAND. 

mother to her offspring. Do not ask me why, for I 
am not writing a philosophical thesis. 

Birds have many natural enemies. I can still hear 
the cries of a young bird that a sparrow-hawk had 
seized in his talons and was bearing overhead. 
What a savage cannibal he seemed to be ! Not for 
anything would I cast undeserved odium on the re- 
putation of any bird, but I fear very much that the 
blue jay is both a robber and a murderer. In the 
season when eggs and young birds are in the nest, 
he has a sly, hang-dog air, which, to my mind, pro- 
claims not only a guilty conscience, but also a sinis- 
ter purpose. At other seasons he seems to have an 
open, frank manner. It is true, I myself have never 
seen him in the very act of robbing a fellow-bird^s 
nest, but I have often seen pewees, vireos, sparrows, 
and goldfinches charge upon him with desperate fury 
when he came in the vicinity of their homesteads. 
Indeed, all the smaller birds seem to have a mortal 
terror of him, which can be accounted for only on 
the ground that he is known to be a highwayman. 

A farmer friend, who loves the birds, and has none 
of the unreasoning prejudice against them sometimes 
displayed by country folk, told me that he once saw 
a blue jay pounce upon a chippie's nest, snatch up a 
callow bantling in his bill, and fly off with it across 
the field to his nest. In a few moments he returned, 
and bore away another nestling. By this time the 
farmer^s ire was aroused, and he got his gun and put 
an end to the feathered brigand's hfe on his return 
for the third mouthful. This is more than circum- 



PHASES OP BIRD LIPE, 211 

stantial evidence. Yet in defence of the handsome 
rascal it may be said that he does good in other 
directions, for he rids the earth of many pestiferous 
insects. Gladly would I acquit him of all blame if 
that were possible. 

Mr. Burroughs thinks that birds which have suf- 
fered at the blue jay's hands — or, rather, beak — 
often retaliate by destroying the jay's eggs. He 
found a jay's nest with five eggs, every one of which 
was punctured, apparently by the sharp bill of some 
bird, with the sole purpose of destroying them, for 
no part of their contents had been removed. He 
suggests that in the bird world the Mosaic law may 
be, "An egg for an egg," instead of "An eye for an 
eye." 

The life of young birds hangs on a very brittle 
thread. A kind of Damocles' sword seems to be 
dangling over them. What a "slaughter of inno- 
cents " in a single season ! I think that of the many 
nests I found during the spring of 1892 fully half 
were raided. How often, on finding a nest, I have 
resolved to watch it until the young birds were ready 
to leave ; but on going back a few days later, the 
cradle was rifled of its treasures. These frequent 
" tragedies of the nests " make the bird-lover sick at 
heart. It is no paradox to say that many birds are 
killed before they are born. 

Birds often meet with fatal accidents. They 
sometimes impale themselves on a thorn, or creep 
into places in thorn-trees from which they cannot 
extricate themselves. A robin hung itself one spring 



212 IN BIRD LAND. 

by a kite- String that swung in a loop from the roof 
of my house, — a case of involuntary suicide. A 
nuthatch that I saw one day in the woods had its 
leg broken, and I could not help thinking of its 
lingering agony before it would starve to death. A 
pet nonpareil, a dear, bright- hued little fellow, was 
well and happy one evening ; but the next morn- 
ing he lay dead on the bottom of the cage, perhaps 
the victim of a convulsion. Another pet nonpareil 
was not in good health ; so I thought a bath in tepid 
water might be good for him ; but alas ! the ablu- 
tion proved too much for the little invalid, which, in 
spite of our utmost efforts to save his life, succumbed 
to the inevitable. A like fate befell a young turtle- 
dove which a neighbor found in the woods and 
brought me for a gift. 

But the cause of a great deal of mortality among 
birds is man^s inhumanity to them. The thirst for 
blood seems to be inherent in many coarse natures, 
and as killing a fellow-man is illegal and almost sure 
to be summarily punished, many men gratify their 
greed for gore by slaying innocent birds and 
animals. 

" Butchers and villains, bloody cannibals ! 
How sweet a plant have you untimely cropped ! 
You have no children, butchers ! if you had, 
The thought of them would have stirred up remorse." 

The small boy with a sling or a spring-gun or an 
air-rifle is a source of much grief to the birds. He 
even kills the tiny kinglets that flit to and fro in the 
trees bordering our streets, and seems to think it 



PHASES OF BIRD LIFE. 213 

sport. More senseless and wicked still was the fash- 
ion in vogue a few years ago, perhaps not yet quite 
obsolete, which compelled the massacre of thousands 
of bright-hued birds for feminine — I should say 
unfeminine — adornment. To say nothing of the 
*^ loudness " and bad taste of such a fashion, it is 
extremely unwise to put birds to death, for no one 
can compute the number of injurious insects they 
annually devour. A bird on the bonnet means so 
much less bread on the table. A bird in the orchard 
is a sort of scavenger and pomologist combined, and 
does his share in giving you a dish of fruit for dinner. 
The scarlet tanager looks like a living ruby in a 
green tree ; but — - 1 speak bluntly — it looks like a 
chunk of gore on a woman's bonnet. In behalf of 
good taste and the birds, I enter my protest against 
this barbaric custom. 

True, birds have elements of the Adamic nature 
in them.' Many of them do relish forbidden fruit, 
and must be driven off, lest they rifle your cherry- 
tree ; but it is seldom necessary to kill them, even 
then, especially those that live wholly on insects and 
fruit. 

A correspondent once sent me a number of 
queries. How do birds come to their " last end " ? 
Do none of them die natural deaths ? If they do, 
why do we never, or at least very rarely, find dead 
or dying birds in the fields and woods? My re- 
sponse to these questions is : Very few birds die 
natural deaths, — that is, merely of sickness or old 
age, — though a few of them may. When a bird 



2 14 ^^^ ^^^^ LAND, 

becomes feeble or is crippled, it falls an easy prey 
to a prowling hawk, owl, shrike, eagle, or cat. 
Should a bird escape all these enemies, and finally 
lie down and die in a natural way, it would doubt- 
less soon be found and devoured by a carrion- eating 
fowl or quadruped, and thus its corpse would never 
be seen by human eyes. Sad indeed it is to think 
of the numberless ways in which birds meet '^ the 
last enemy." 

Be it far from me to use caustic speech against 
any man or set of men; but it makes me both in- 
dignant and sick at heart to read the bloody chroni- 
cles of most of the so-called " collectors," How 
many embryo birds they slay merely to gratify their 
morbid craze for gathering ^' clutches," as they 
suggestively call a set of eggs ! Not long ago a col- 
lector narrated, in an ornithological journal, the 
harrowing story of his having rifled the nest of a 
hairy woodpecker five or six times in a single season, 
the poor bird laying a new deposit after each bur- 
glary, until at last she grew suspicious and sought a 
safer site for her nest. The writer described his 
part of the performance with apparent gusto, as if 
he had made a splendid contribution to science ! 
If he must have a collection of hairy woodpecker's 
eggs, why not take a single ^^ clutch," and then leave 
the bird to make her second deposit and rear her 
brood in peace? 

To my mind, many " professionals " shoot a score 
of birds where they ought to shoot but one. The 
long record of slaughtered birds is sickening. The 



PHASES OF BIRD LIFE, 215 

Newgate Calendar scarcely furnishes a parallel. 
Even our most scientific journals print many of 
these bloody annals. It is true^ a reasonable num- 
ber of specimens must be collected for scientific pur- 
poses, but surely no adequate excuse can be given 
for shooting hundreds of individuals of the same 
species merely to have the honor of saying that an 
astounding number of specimens were ^^ taken." If 
the cause of natural history cannot be promoted 
without destroying the humane instincts of the natu- 
ralist himself, the price is too great \ it were better 
left unpaid. A bird in the bush is worth forty in 
the hand, especially if the forty are dead; worth 
more, too, I venture to add, to the cause of science 
itself. 



2l6 IN BIRD LAND. 



XVI. 

THE SECRET OF APPRECIATION. 

IT is an open secret, and perhaps not a very pro- 
found one, I need not prolong the reader's 
suspense, if mayhap he should feel any, by assum- 
ing a mysterious air, but may as well frankly divulge 
the secret at once. There are times when melo- 
drama is sadly out of place — if, indeed, it is ever in 
place. What, then, is the secret of appreciation? 
It is simply being en rapport with the object or 
truth to be appreciated. No more patent fact was 
ever declared than that which Saint Paul wrote : 
" Spiritual things are spiritually discerned." There 
must be mental kinship, or there cannot be true 
valuation. Bring a depressed or distracted mind to 
the most exhilarating service, and you will miss its 
pith and point, and go away unrewarded. 

The same truth obtains in our commerce with 
Nature, which, it would seem, will not brook a rival in 
our hearts if we would win from ber all her treasured 
sweets. " Give me your whole mind, your whole 
attention," she says, '^ or I will close up every foun- 
tain of refreshment." What benefit will that man 
whose mind is absorbed in the affairs of the market 
derive from a woodland stroll? What secret will 



THE SECRET OF APPRECIATION. 217 

the rustling leaves speak to him, or the opening 
flowers, or the chirping birds? He sees no transit 
of swift wings, and the sunshine dapples the leaf- 
carpeted ground in vain for eyes that see only the 
ledger and day-book in the sylvan haunt. 

My own experience confirms the foregoing state- 
ments. For several months one summer I felt 
depressed and abstracted on account of several 
untoward circumstances which need not be described, 
for ^^ every heart knoweth its own bitterness." In 
this mood I sometimes sauntered out to my wood- 
land haunts ; but I saw very little, and what I did 
see bore the stamp of triteness, and seemed as dull 
and languid as myself. My heart was otherwhere. 
A secret, gnawing grief draws the thoughts inward, 
and breaks the spell of the outer world, charm she 
never so sweetly. The soul hopelessly hungering 
for the unattainable comes almost to despise the 
blessings within its grasp. A-lack-a-day, that any- 
thing should ever come between the heart and its 
gentle mistress. Nature ! And so it was that even 
the birds, my precious intimates, became a weari- 
ness both to the flesh and the spirit. 

Master Chickadee was nothing but a lump of flesh 
covered with mezzo-tinted feathers, all prose, no 
poetry ; a creature that I had once invested with a 
rare charm (in my own mind), but now only a lout of 
a bird, a buffoon, whose noisy chatter broke harshly 
into my gloomy meditations. Once I had fairly 
revelled in the army of kaleidoscopic warblers, and 
had called them to their faces all kinds of endearins: 



2l8 IN BIRD LAND, 

names, like a lover wooing a bride ; but now, in my 
dejected frame of mind, they were prosaic enough, 
and provokingly shy, and I felt too indifferent even 
to ogle them with my glass as they tilted in the tree- 
tops. What a humdrum hfe was the hfe of the 
birds, anyway, and how indescribably humdrum my 
semi-frequent beat in the woods was becoming 1 

But by and by, in the autumn, an event occurred 
that transformed my inner world, dispelling the 
darkness, dissipating the clouds, bathing all in sun- 
shine. Then I hied to the fields and woods, and, 
behold, a metamorphosis ! The inner miracle had 
wrought an outer wonder. Never was there '' such 
mutual recognition vaguely sweet " between the 
autumn woods and my appreciative heart. The 
ground, flecked with sunshine, filtering through the 
browning leaves, became a work of mosaic fit for a 
king to tread on, and the westerly breeze sang a 
paean through the branches. And how many birds 
there were ! A flock of robins were chirping in the 
grove, now and then breaking into song, as if they 
had forgotten that spring was past and that it was 
unconventional for robin redbreast to sing in the 
autumn ; but they seemed to be willing to make a 
breach of the convenances to give me delight. 

Numerous warblers chirped in the tree-tops, or 
swung out on the upbuoying air to catch some ill- 
fated insect on the wing ; and although I could not 
identify many of them, I felt no annoyance, as I had 
at other times, for I could truly '' rejoice with those 
that do rejoice," because I had no sorrow of my 



THE SECRET OP APPRECIATION. 219 

own to distract my mind. I could have forgiven 
almost any trick a bird had seen fit to play me. 
The brown creeper, just from his haunt in some 
primeval forest of British America, went hitching up 
a tree-bole in his own quaint way without even the 
courtesy of a friendly how-d'-you-do ; but I forgave 
the slight, and told him he was a poet, — there was 
rhythm in every movement, and his feathers rhymed 
each with its fellow. 

Across the breezy hills to the river valley I made 
my way in lightsome mood, finding birds a-plenty 
wherever I went. More than once the song-spar- 
rows broke into their autumnal twitter, aftermath of 
their springtime choruses when they were in full 
tone ; and occasionally the Carolina wren uttered 
his stirring reveille, which, though perhaps not tune- 
ful in itself, seemed tuneful to me that day, because 
there was music in my own mind. When you are 
in the right mood, even the distant caw of the crow 
or the plaintive cry of the blue jay sets the harp of 
your soul to melody ; while the riotous piping of the 
cardinal grossbeak makes you feel as if you were 
" married to immortal verse.'* 

But, alas ! when " loathed melancholy, of Cer- 
berus and blackest midnight born," is your unbidden 
companion, every overture of Nature is a burden, an 
intrusion into the privacy of your grief, and — 

" Vainly morning spreads her lure 
Of a sky serene and pure." 

In a leaf- strewn arcade beneath the overarching 
bushes hard by the river, were the merry juncos, my 



2 20 IN BIRD LAND. 

companions of the winter, which had come back 
from their summer vacation in the north. How 
glad I was to salute them and welcome them home ! 
Their trig little forms, sprightly motions, confident 
air of comradery, and merry trills were a joy to me. 
And then I could not help wondering if any of them 
might be the same birds I had met during the early 
summer on one of the green mountains of Canada, 
where I had spent a day of rapturous delight. In 
the same sequestered angle, autumn though it was, 
the phoebe bird brought back reminiscences of 
spring, with his cheery whistle ; while farther down 
the valley his shy relative, the wood-pewee, com- 
plained dulcetly that winter was coming to drive 
him from his pleasant summer haunts. Every 
sound, whether joyful or sad, struck a responding 
chord in my heart, because Nature had my undi- 
vided thought. 

When the mind is distracted by sorrows it can- 
not shake off, it boots little that the chirp of the 
chestnut-sided and cerulean warblers is sharp and 
penetrating ; that the call of the black- throated 
green, black- throated blue and myrtle warblers is 
somewhat harsh ; that the Maryland yellow-throat 
expresses his alarm or disapproval in a note still 
lower in the scale and quite rasping ; that the Black- 
burnian and parula warblers tilt about far up in the 
tree-tops, as if they scorned the ground ; that the 
black-throats and creepers dance airily about in the 
bushes or lower branches of the trees, corne con- 
fidingly near you, a tiny interrogation point dangling 



THE SECRET OF APPRECIATION. 221 

from every eyelash, ask you what you are about, 
what you do when you are at home, whether you 
have just come from the hospital that you look so 
pale, and, having decided that you are a harmless 
monomaniac, to say the worst, go about their play- 
ful toil of capturing insects, apparently unmindful 
of your presence. But when your heart is jolly and 
full of nature love, all these simple facts, proving the 
large diversity of temperament in bird-land's deni- 
zens, are a source of joy to you ; you note them, are 
glad on account of them, though you scarcely know 
why. 

In a quiet retreat just beyond a steep-graded rail- 
way-track the black-throated green warblers were 
very abundant and unusually rollicksome. It was 
strange how they could dash about in the thorn-trees 
without impaling themselves on the terrible spears. 
One little fellow swung out of a tree after a miller, 
which dropped upon a fence-post near by. Why 
did the natty bird act so queerly? He danced about 
on the top of the post, tried to pick up something, 
but was baffled in all his efforts ; then he scudded 
around the post a few inches below the top like a 
nuthatch, uttering his harsh little chirp. At length 
I stepped up, determined to solve the enigma. 
There was the solution ; the miller had wriggled into 
a deep hole in the post, so that the bird could not 
reach it. With a slender stick I drew it out of its 
hiding-place, and placed it on the top of the post ; 
but whether the bird ever went back and profited by 
my well-meant helpfulness I do not know. Begging 



22 2 IN BIRD LAND. 

the poor miller's pardon, I felt happy in befriending 
the charming fairy of a bird. With gladness throb- 
bing in every corpuscle, it was not in my place to 
question Nature's economy in making the sacrifice 
of one life necessary to the sustenance of another. 
Tramping on, I presently found myself in a marsh 
stretching back from the river-bank. As I stood in 
the tangle of tall grass and weeds, listening to the 
songs and twitters of various birds, the sentiment, 
if not the precise Hnes, of Lowell, came to mind like 
a draught of invigorating air, — 

*'Dear marshes ! vain to him the gift of sight 
Who cannot in their various incomes share, 
From every season drawn, of shade and light, 

Who sees in them but levels brown and bare. 
Each change of storm or sunshine scatters free 

On them its largess of variety, 
For Nature with cheap means still works her wonders 
rare/' 

But what was that sharp chirp? It instantly drew 
my thoughts from the marsh itself and the poet's 
tribute. Opera-glass in hand, I softly stole near the 
bushy clump from which the sound came. Ah ! 
there the bird was, tilting uneasily on a slender twig. 
The swamp- sparrow ! It was the first time I had 
positively identified this bird in my own neighbor- 
hood, — not, I suppose, because it had not been pres- 
ent often and again, but because I had been too 
dull of sight to see it. Then came a glad memory. 
I recalled the peculiar circumstances under which I 
had seen my first swamp-sparrow, hundreds of miles 



THE SECRET OF APPRECIATION, 223 

away. , During a visit to Boston and vicinity, a 
year prior, I spent a never-to-be-forgotten afternoon 
with Bradford Torrey, who needs no introduction 
to intelhgent readers. We walked out to some of 
his favorite haunts. It was an ideal October day, 
and the charming New England landscape threw a 
spell over me that gave me a kind of other-worldly 
feeling. My companion was all I had expected him to 
be, and more, — a good talker and an appreciative 
listener, — and even now, when I recall my saunter 
with this quiet, gentle bird-lover, it seems more like 
a dream than a reality. 

The afternoon had slipped well by when we came 
to a bush-fringed brook and Mr. Torrey told me that 
there were swamp-sparrows m the thickets. " How 
much I should like to see one ! " I cried. " The 
swamp-sparrow is a stranger to me." ^' You shall 
have your wish gratified," he replied; and forthwith 
he climbed the fence, stalked to the other side of 
the stream, and slowly, gently drove the chirping 
sparrows toward me, so that I could see their mark- 
ings plainly with my glass. How lovingly I ogled 
them ! I could not get my fill of the birds shown 
me by one whom I had loved so long at a distance. 
It was an epoch in my poor life, — an epoch in a 
double sense. Who will censure my feeling of grati- 
fied pride? In the evening, after our stroll, as we 
walked to and fro on the platform at the railway- 
station waiting for the train to start, I remarked : 
'* Mr. Torrey, I shall never forget my first meeting 
with the swamp-sparrow." 



2 24 ^^ BIRD LAND. 

" No," he responded innocently, as if my humble 
remembrance would confer an honor upon him ; 
" whenever you see that bird hereafter, you will 
think of me, won't you? " I told him I should ; and 
that evening in the marsh, a year later, I kept my 
tryst with memory, while tears, half sad, half glad, 
dimmed my eyes. 

But hark ! A Httle farther on, from the sparse 
bushes of a grassy bank, came the swinging treble 
of a white-throated sparrow, like a votive offering. 
What enchantment possessed the birds that evening ? 
Had Orpheus with his miracle-working harp come 
back to earth? I was half tempted to believe for 
the nonce in the transmigration of souls, for the 
notes drifted so sadly sweet on the still air, as if 
the fabled minstrel had indeed returned to mundane 
realms. Among the thick clusters of weeds and 
bushes that fringed a railway, which I pursued in my 
homeward walk, many birds were going to roost, — 
sparrows, warblers, red-winged blackbirds, and car- 
dinal grossbeaks. My passing along alarmed them, 
and sent them dashing from their leafy couches. 

Thus the afternoon passed. I had not, perhaps, 
learned as many new things about my kinsmen in 
plumes as on many other rambles, but I had dis- 
covered the secret of appreciation ; that the mind 
must be unharassed by carking care or depressing 
sorrow to win the best from Nature. Give me a 
lightsome heart, and I will trudge with any pedestrian. 
Give me a heavy heart, and the weight clings to the 
soles of my feet like barnacles to a ship's bottom. 



THE SECRET OF APPRECIATION, 225 

Given the proper mood, the lines of an American 
poet — no need to mention his name — have the 
ring of gospel truth, — 

" Nature, the supplement of man, 
His hidden sense interpret can ; 
What friend to friend cannot convey 
Shall the dumb bird instructed say." 



IS 



2 26 IN BIRD LAND, 



XVII. 

BROWSINGS IN OTHER FIELDS. 

EVEN the most home-loving body may sometimes 
gain refreshment, and at the same time have 
his mental vision broadened, by a jaunt to another 
neighborhood ; and if he has a hobby, he may 
beguile the days in riding it, and thus evade, for a 
time at least, that most harrowing of all- maladies, 
homesickness. Well, to make a long story short, 
and a dull one a little brighter, let me say at once 
that I have, more or less recently, made several 
visits to various points of interest, and everywhere 
have found delightful comradeship with the birds. 
First, I shall speak of a trip to Montreal, that gem 
city on the* St. Lawrence, beautiful for situation as 
well as for other attractive features. 

South of the city a mountain rears its green, 
symmetrical mass. True, it is not very lofty as 
mountains go ; but standing there alone in the midst 
of a far stretching plain, it seems really majestic, 
especially to one unused to great altitudes. It is a 
favorite pleasure-resort for residents and visitors, 
having been converted into a beautiful park, with 
winding paths and driveways, many shady nooks, 
with comfortable benches to lounge on, and a tower 



BROWSINGS IN OTHER FIELDS. 227 

on the summit, from which you can look down upon 
a scene that is really enchanting. Nestling at the 
foot of the mountain is the city, with its towers, 
steeples, well-laid streets, and palatial residences ; 
curving and gleaming far to the northeast and south- 
west is the mighty St. Lawrence, its green banks 
holding it in loving embrace far as the eye can reach ; 
in another direction you trace the Ottawa River 
meandering far to the northwest like a ribbon of 
silver, and dividing into two branches a few miles 
away, thus forming the island of Montreal ; beyond 
the St. Lawrence is the Lake of Two Mountains, and 
far away in the misty distance toward the south 
and southwest, are the blue outlines of the Green 
and Adirondack ranges ; in other directions the 
plain stretches level until it melts in the hazy 
distance, and is dotted with farm-houses, villages, 
well-cultivated fields, and green woodlands. 

One afternoon a few unoccupied hours were at 
my disposal. I determined to spend them on 
Mount Royal, as the eminence is called. A car 
wheels you up an inclined plane, almost perpen- 
dicular near the top, at least two-thirds of the way 
to the summit. Having filled myself with the scene 
from the tower, I was starting off to make a tour of 
the park, when my footsteps were arrested by a 
quaint new song coming from a clump of trees 
farther down the declivity. Interest in everything 
else vanished in a moment. A good deal of time 
was spent before I could get a sight of the minstrel. 
Much to my surprise, he turned out to be a thrush ; 



2 28 IN BIRD LAND. 

the species, however, could not be determined at 
the time for lack of my opera-glass, as the bird was 
perched rather high in a tree. In the brief time at 
my disposal just then, I saw a number of other 
birds, and resolved to spend a day on the mountain 
studying them, as soon as other duties would permit. 

That day came in good time. An early morning 
hour found me skirting the steep sides of the moun- 
tain, alert for feathered dwellers. It was the tenth 
of July, too late for the best songs and for finding 
birds in the nest, and yet I felt fairly well satisfied 
with the results of the day's excursion. Presently 
the song of the thrush, whose identity I had come 
to settle, was heard in the copse. A look at him 
with my glass proved him to be the veery, or Wilson's 
thrush, only a migrant in my State, and one that 
pursues his pilgrimage both to the north and south 
in patience-trying silence. 

To my ear the song was sweet, almost hauntingly 
so. Some notes were quite like certain strains of 
the wood-thrush's rich song, but others seemed more 
ringing and bell-like, and the whole tune was more 
skilfully and smoothly rendered, — that is, with less 
labored effort. Still, I am loath to say that the 
general effect of this bird's song is more pleasing 
than that of the wood-thrush, for there is something 
far-away and dreamy about the minstrelsy of the 
latter that one does not hear in the song of any 
other species. 

The veeries evidently had nests or younglings 
among the bushes, for they called in harsh, alarmed 



BROWSINGS IN OTHER FIELDS. 229 

tones as I entered their secluded haunts, but I had 
not the good fortune to find a nest. Indeed, it 
was too late to discover any nests at all, except such 
as had been deserted. But, to my great delight, I 
found that the jolly juncos breed on the mountain, 
for there they were carrying food to their little ones, 
which had left the nursery and were ensconced in 
the thick foliage. These birds are winter residents 
in my own neighborhood, but in the spring they hie 
to this and other localities of the same and higher 
latitudes to spend the summer. It was refreshing 
to meet my little winter intimates. They were quite 
lyrical, but their little trills did not seem any more 
tuneful here in their breeding- haunts than in their 
winter residences, especially when Spring pours her 
subtle essence into their veins. 

Nothing surprised me more than to find song- 
sparrows on the top of the mountain, whereas they 
are usually the tenants of the swamps and other low- 
lands in my neighborhood. Here they were rearing 
families on the mountain's crest as well as along the 
streams that laved the mountain's base. They also 
sang their tinkhng roundels in both places, some- 
times ringing them out so loudly that they could be 
distinctly heard above the clatter of the street cars. 

At one place, in a cluster of half-dead trees and 
saplings, a colony of warblers were tilting about ; 
all of them only migrants about my home in Ohio, 
but breeding here. There were old and young 
creeping warblers, the elders singing their trills in 
lively fashion, and the young ones twittering coax- 



230 IN BIRD LAND, 

ingly for food. Here were also a number of redstarts, 
— sonnets in black and gold, — the young beseech- 
ing their parents constantly for more luncheon, A 
beautiful chestnut- sided warbler wheeled into sight 
and reeled off his jolly little trill, and then gave his 
half-grown baby a tidbit from his beak. On another 
part of the mountain the song of a black-throated 
green warbler fell pensively on the ear, coming from 
the thick branches of a tall tree, Hke a requiem from 
a broken heart. Presently he flitted down into plain 
view, his curiosity drawing him toward his auditor 
sitting beneath on the grass. No doubt his mate 
was crouched on her nest far up in one of the trees. 

In a thicket on the acclivity of the mountain, I 
•heard a loud, appealing call, which was new to me ; 
and yet it evidently came from the throat of a young 
bird pleading for its dinner. By dint of a good deal 
of peering about and patient waiting, I at length 
found it to be a juvenile chestnut-sided warbler. 
Lying on the ground beneath the green canopy 
of the bushes, I watched it a long time, hoping to 
see the old bird feed it ; but she was too shy to 
come near, although the youngster grew almost des- 
perate in its entreaties. An old nest in the crotch 
of a sapling near at hand announced where the 
little fellow had, no doubt, been hatched. It was 
a beautiful nest, as compactly built as the cottage 
of a goldfinch, and was decorated, like a red- eyed 
vireo's nest, with tiny balls of spider-web and strips 
of paper. 

Not far away from this charmed spot a red- eyed 



BROWSINGS IN OTHER FIELDS. 231 

vireo had hung her basket to the horizontal fork of 
a small swaying branch. It was still fresh, and in 
such good condition as to convince me that it had 
just been completed by the little basket-maker, 
which had not yet deposited her dainty eggs in the 
cup. No other bird on the mountain sang as much 
as this vireo, with the sharp red eyes and golden 
breast. On the whole, I doubt not that Mount 
Royal would be an almost ideal place for bird study, 
if one could spend the month of June on its wooded 
summit, slopes, and acclivities. 

The next visit to be described was made to the 
somewhat celebrated Zoological Garden at Cincin- 
nati, Ohio, which contains a really magnificent collec- 
tion of animals and birds. However, a description 
of the latter must suffice, although the animals inter- 
ested me almost as deeply. There are many cages 
and aviaries containing rare species of feathered 
folk, the only difficulty being that they are not so 
thoroughly labelled as they might be for the con- 
venience of visitors, many of whom are sufficiently 
interested to want to know at least the common 
names of the birds. All curators and superin- 
tendents of such institutions should recognize the 
importance of complete and systematic labelling of 
the specimens in their care. 

The first aviary at which I stopped consisted of 
a collection of bright-hued and sweet-toned birds, 
most of them foreigners. Here one could revel 
in variety ; for there were crimson-eared waxbills 
from West Africa, black-headed finches from India, 



232 IN BIRD LAND. 

cut-throat finches and other dainty folk from across 
the sea, with indigo-birds, nonpareils, goldfinches, 
and song-sparrows from our own land. Of these, 
the nonpareils, or painted finches, were the most 
gifted singers, having loud, clear voices that rang 
far above the voices of their fellow-prisoners. No 
birds make daintier pets than these pretty creatures, 
with their delicate blue and red costumes. The 
next best singer in this collection w^as the American 
goldfinch, which was not far behind the nonpareil, 
and really excelled him in one respect, — that is, his 
song was more prolonged and varied. 

The next collection was certainly a parti-hued 
one, containing cardinal grossbeaks, Brazilian car- 
dinals, crow blackbirds, towhee buntings, brown 
• thrashers, and English blackbirds. I had the pleas- 
ure of hearing the song of the Brazilian cardinal. 
It was quite fine, but scarcely comparable with the 
rich, full-toned, and varied whistle of our cardinal- 
bird, being much less vigorous, slower in move- 
ment, and feebler in tone. It was gratifying to be 
able to give the palm to our North Am.eric5,n 
songster. 

But of all the clatter of bird music and bird noise 
combined that I have ever heard in my Hfe, the 
song of the English starling bore off the bays. 
Never before had I listened to such divers sounds 
from a bird's throat, nor had I even fancied that 
they were possible. Small wonder a well-trained 
starling costs from twenty to forty dollars at the 
bird stores ! No description can do justice to the 



BROWSINGS IN OTHER FIELDS. 233 

Starling's song. He begins in a low, subdued tone, 
and seems at first to be quite calm ; but gradually he 
grows excited, his body quivers and sways from side 
to side, his neck is craned out, his throat expands and 
contracts convulsively, and, oh ! oh ! oh ! — pardon 
the exclamations — the hurly-burly that gurgles and 
ripples and bubbles and pours from his windpipe ! 
At one point a double sound is produced, or two 
sounds nearly at the same moment, — one low and 
guttural, the other on a higher key, — presently a 
half-dozen notes rush forth pell-mell, accompanied 
by a quick snapping of the mandibles ; then a suc- 
cession of loud, musical, explosive notes fall on the 
ear ; and finally the bird, as if in a spasm of ecstasy, 
opens his mouth wide and utters a clear, rapturous 
trill as a sort of musical peroration. It is simply 
wonderful. At first the bird seems to control the 
song, but erelong the song seems to master the bird 
completely. To my mind, it seemed that the song- 
ster in the intervals of silence had wound up his 
music-box, and then, having got started, was unable 
to stop until the spring had run down. Some of 
the notes of the strain were quite melodious, while 
others were rather grating. 

But what was that silvery song, rising above all 
the other clangor of music ? It was the trill of my 
peerless little friend, the white-throated sparrow, 
which I have met so often in my own woodland 
trysts. Were I to award the prize to any bird in 
the whole Zoo for sweetness of tone, it would cer- 
tainly be given to this matchless minstrel. No other 



2 34 ^^V BIRD LAND. 

bird's voice had such a purely musical quality ; and 
he sang just as loudly and sweetly as he does in his 
native copse, bringing back the memory of many a 
pleasant woodland ramble. 

A beautiful family group next claimed attention. 
It comprised two adult silver pheasants, a male and 
female, and two Httle chicks recently from the shell, 
which had been hatched in the Zoo. They looked 
like downy chickens, and were about as large. There 
was no hint of the long, gorgeous plumes that their 
papa bore so proudly ; nothing but brownish, slightly 
checkered down made up their suits. When their 
mamma pecked at something on the ground, they 
would scamper to her for it, as you have seen small 
chickens do. Unlike most young birds, they picked 
up their food themselves, and did not pry open 
their mouths to be fed. 

Had you seen the birds I next stopped to ogle, 
you would have joined in my merriment ; for they 
were the great kingfishers of Australia. What heavy 
bills they carried, looking like good-sized clubs ! 
One of them pounded his beak against his perch 
until it fairly rattled with the concussion. When I 
tapped lightly against the wires, they stretched out 
their necks, and hissed at me out of their huge 
mouths. 

Nothing was more pleasing than a large wired 
house containing a dozen or more blue jays. Rain 
was falling gently at the time, and the refreshing 
drops filtered upon the birds through the wire roof. 
How they enjoyed their bath as they flitted from 



BROWSINGS IN OTHER FIELDS, 235 

perch to perch ! But the ram did not descend 
rapidly enough for several of them ; and so, in order 
to drench their plumage more thoroughly, they 
plunged into the leafy bushes growing in their apart- 
ment, and crept about over and through the sprinkled 
foliage until their feathers were well rinsed. 

An interesting bird was the yellow-headed black- 
bird, which is a resident of some of our Western 
States, but which does not deign even to visit my 
neighborhood. His whole head and neck are 
brilliant yellow, as if he had plunged up to his 
shoulders in a keg of yellow paint, while the rest of 
his attire is shiny black. He utters a loud, shrill 
whistle, quite unlike any sound produced by his 
kinsmen, the crow blackbird and the red-wing. He 
seemed to feel quite at home in his cage with several 
other species of birds. 

Many a time I have thought I heard a tumult of 
bird song in the fields or woods, but at the Zoo I 
was greeted with a perfect din from the throats of 
more than two dozen indigo-birds, all singing simul- 
taneously. They simply drowned out every other 
sound in the neighborhood when they chimed in 
the chorus. Even the goldfinch, doing his level 
best, could not be heard until there was a lull in 
the shriller music. In the same enclosure were the 
bluebirds and robins. My pity went out to one of 
the robins, which was trying to build a nest, but 
could not find a proper site nor the right kind of 
material. She would pick up a bunch of fibres and 
strings from the ground, fling them on the window- 



236 IN BIRD LAND. 

sill, and then squat down upon them to press them 
into the desired concave with her red bosom ; but 
it was all to no purpose, for she had no mortar with 
which to rear the walls of a cottage. 

Leaving the robin to her fruitless labors, I turned 
to a collection of weaver-birds of various species 
and divers markings. There was one, especially, 
with a black head and neck and yellow body, that 
attracted notice. He was rather handsome ; his 
song, however, was a perfect squall, especially the 
closing notes. These birds did not sing all the 
time, but intermittently, one of them beginning with 
a few ringing notes as a prelude, and then the others 
joining, all screaming louder and louder as the 
chorus went on, until they ended in a supreme 
racket. Then there were a few moments of quiet, 
followed by the united chorus as before, making 
such a tumult that one voice could scarcely be dis- 
tinguished from another. A dainty little sparrow, 
unnamed, seemed to fill in the intervals with his chirp- 
ings, forming a sort of semi-musical interlude. 

The enclosure which contained the yellow-headed 
blackbird was divided into a number of apartments. 
Here were parrots of various species, among them a 
number of white-throated Amazons. You have 
doubtless heard a dozen or more parrots screaming 
simultaneously. On my visit these birds created 
a terrible hubbub. They cried and laughed and 
sighed and groaned and shrieked until my ears were 
almost deafened. But in the midst of it all, when 
there was a slight lull, could be heard the silvery 



BROWSINGS IN OTHER FIELDS. 237 

trill of a white-throated sparrow, sounding like the 
music of an angel amid a tumult of imps. 

Near the centre of the garden there is a long 
pond enclosed by wire fencing, and on and about 
this pond is to be found an interesting group of 
water-fowls. There was a large bluish-colored crane 
with a ruff of feathers about his head. A workman 
came along and snapped his fingers at the bird, 
which hopped and leaped about and almost turned 
a somersault. A great blue heron had made a nest 
of sticks and twigs on the bare bank of the pond, 
and was sitting on two eggs. While I was watching 
her, she rose slowly on her long stilts, stretched out 
her stiffened wings, rearranged the sticks with her 
bill, and then sat down on her eggs again, turning 
them under her breast. What an opportunity for a 
bird student if day by day he could have watched 
her build her nest and rear her young ! 

Swimming about on the pond like a couple of 
feathered craft were two great white pelicans with 
long bills and elevated wings. A tuft of feathers or 
bristles grew on the top of their upper mandibles. 
They seemed to be guying each other, or probably 
were engaged in a real naval battle ; for they pur- 
sued each other around and around, engaged in 
various martial movements and counter-movements, 
and every now and then clashed together their great 
beaks like two men fencing with swords. But they 
avoided close contact. How lightly and smoothly 
they glided about on the water ! 

Standing on a platform on the other side of the 



238 IN BIRD LAND. 

pond, were two more large, almost gigantic pelicans, 
not of the same species as the two just mentioned, 
having no tufts on their beaks, but a large feather- 
less spot on the side of their heads encircling the 
eye. There they stood, silently preening their 
plumes, dexterously drawing each snowy feather 
between their mandibles. How long they had been 
making their toilet I cannot say. Presently the first 
two pelicans came sailing over to the platform, and 
climbed awkwardly upon it. Would there be a 
pitched battle between them and the other two 
birds? One of the latter stretched forth his neck, 
and, to my great surprise, puffed out a large mem- 
branous bag or pouch at his throat like that of a 
frog, and uttered a warning cry. But soon the 
quartette of feathered Goliaths settled down into 
quiet, and adjusted their plumes without the least 
interference with one another's comfort. 

Following a winding pathway, I presently reached 
an apartment which contained sixteen great horned 
owls, sitting in a row and looking as wise as Greek 
sages. It was amusing to see them expand their 
eyes and stare through the blinding Hght, then 
blink, close one eye and dilate the other, and then 
shut both so nearly that only narrow chinks were 
visible between the lids. Several of them opened 
their small, human-like mouths, and hissed at me 
softly whenever I stirred. In another part of the 
ground there was a collection of barn owls, with 
faces that looked very intelligent; but the birds 
seemed to be quite wild, glaring with their black 



BROWSINGS IN OTHER FIELDS. 239 

eyes and swaying their heads from side to side in 
a neivous, irritable way. 

I felt many times repaid for my saunter through 
the Zoo, and would advise all who have an oppor- 
tunity of visiting a good zoological garden not to 
let it go by unimproved. A great deal of informa- 
tion as well as pleasure may be thus gained. 

Wherever one is, one must get people to talking 
about one's mania. How else could it be said that 
there is method in one's madness, or in what re- 
spects it differs from mere lunacy? While visiting 
with a delightful family living in a city some dis- 
tance from my home, our conversation drifted — 
perhaps with a good deal of calculation on my part 
— to the birds, with the result that I was put in 
possession of several facts worth noting, chiefly be- 
cause they prove how helpful some birds are to one 
another in their domestic relations. No birds are 
more ingenious in planning for one another's com- 
fort and safety than our '^ foreign brethren," the 
English sparrows. The mistress of this intelligent 
family, a woman who has keen eyes and ears for 
the birds, declared that she always heard one spar- 
row in the trees about the house waking up its 
sleeping mates at break of day, like the father of a 
family rousing his drowsing children. It called in 
shrill tones as if it were saying, " Wake up ! wake 
up ! Day is coming 1 Time to go to work ! " As 
it continued its clamor, it seemed to be flying 
about from one point to another, visiting every bed- 
room, until at length a faint peep was heard here 



240 IN BIRD LAND. 

and there in response from various members of the 
sparrow household, and erelong the entire com- 
pany was awake. When my friend told me this 
story, I was considerably surprised, not to say a 
little skeptical. But, remaining in their home over 
night, I had an opportunity to confirm the story, 
for I was myself awakened in the morning by the 
loud, impatient calls of a sparrow rousing his fam- 
ily ; and the process took place just as my inform- 
ants had described it, leaving no longer any room 
for doubt. 

The same kind friends described another cun- 
ning freak of bird behavior. A lady's bedroom 
window opened near some bushy trees, in which a 
pair of birds — perhaps robins — had built a nest. 
At night the lady would often hear the male singing. 
But sometimes he would grow drowsy, and would 
become silent, — he had evidently got to napping, 
— when there would be a coaxing, complaining 
Fe-e-e-p! pe-e-e-p I from the little wife on the nest, 
evidently asking him to ^' sing some more." Then 
he would tune his pipe again until his throat got 
tired and his eyelids heavy. In this way the ex- 
acting wife kept her spouse serenading her for a 
large part of the night. Perhaps, like children, 
she could not sleep unless some one was singing to 
her. At all events, it was very bright of her to de- 
mand a lullaby or love -song from her husband to 
put her to sleep. 

The conduct of many kinds of birds in the 
autumn while preparing for their Hegira to the 



BROWSING IN OTHER FIELDS, 241 

south is extremely interesting. They assemble in 
flocks, sometimes large enough to suggest an ecu- 
menical council, and fall to cackling, twittering, 
discussing, and in many other ways making prepa- 
ration for their aerial voyage to another clime. 
They really seem to regret being compelled to 
leave their pleasant summer haunts, if one may 
judge from the length and fervor of their good- 
byes. Perhaps they are like human beings who 
have a strong attachment for home, and must visit 
every nook and tryst to say au revoir before they 
take their departure. One can easily imagine how 
dear, to their hearts are the scenes of their child- 
hood, and of their nest-building and brood-rearing. 
No birds make a greater to-do over their leave- 
taking in the autumn than the house martins. I 
once visited for a few days with some friends who 
live in the country and have had a bevy of mar- 
tins in their boxes for many years. They described 
the behavior of these birds when fall comes. At a 
certain date in September they will gather in a 
compact flock, sing and whistle and chatter at the 
top of their voices, circle about the premises, alight- 
ing on the trees, fences, and buildings, and then will 
rise in the air and sail away through the blue ether. 
Strange to say, they may return in a day or two, 
and repeat their evolutions ; and this may be 
done several times before they say adieu and begin 
their southward pilgrimage in real earnest. Why 
do they do this? One might well rack one's brain 
in vain conjectures. Do they lose their way the 

16 



242 I^ BIRD LAND, 

first time? Or do they get a bad start, and then 
come back to try again? Or do they get home- 
sick after they have gone some distance, and return 
once more to look upon the familiar scenes? It 
would be difficult to sift all the processes of bird 
cerebration. 



A BIRD ANTHOLOGY FROM LOWELL, 243 



XVIII. 
A BIRD ANTHOLOGY FROM LOWELL.^ 

IN making a study of Lowell's poetry for a special 
purpose, one cannot help admiring the genius 
with which he transmutes every theme he touches 
into gold. His Muse is exceedingly versatile, ranging 
at her own sweet will over a wide and varied field. 
There may be times when you are not in the mood 
for smiling at his humor or weeping at his pathos ; 
but his delineations of Nature are always so true, 
so musical, so picturesque, that they seldom fail to 
strike a responsive chord in the breasts of those 
readers who are not 

" Aliens among the birds and brooks, 
Dull to interpret or conceive 
What gospels lost the woods retrieve." 

No other American poet seems to get quite so 
near to Nature's throbbing heart. Dream though 
he sometimes may, he seldom loses his hold on the 
world of reality. Nature in her own garb is beauti- 

1 This article, under the title of " Lowell and the Birds," 
was first published in the *' New England Magazine/' for 
November, 1891, shortly after the poet's death. Copyright 
credit is here given to the publisher of that magazine. 



244 ^^^ ^^^^ LAND, 

ful enough for him, and does not need the garnish- 
ing and drapery of an over-fanciful interpretation. 
It is not my purpose, however, to eulogize Lowell's 
poetry, even his poetry of Nature, in a general way, 
or attempt an analysis of it, but simply to call atten- 
tion to his metrical descriptions of the feathered 
creation. Among all our American poets, he is the 
limner par excellence of bird ways. It is true that 
Emerson is somewhat rich in allusions to our feath- 
ered denizens, and especially felicitous in his char- 
acterizations; but his references are briefer, more 
casual, and far less frequent than those of Lowell, 
who takes toll of them, one might almost say, 
without stint ; for he says of himself, — 

*' My heart, I cannot still it, 
Nest that has song-birds in it." 

Lowell never speaks of the birds in a stereotyped 
way, as many poets do, but mentions them by name, 
and often describes their behavior with a deftness 
and accuracy of touch that fairly enchant the 
specialist in bird lore. Having given no little at- 
tention to the study of birds, I feel prepared to say 
that Lowell's hand is almost always sure when he 
undertakes to depict the manners of the " feathered 
republic of the groves." I have found, I think, 
only one technical inaccuracy in all his numerous 
allusions ; ^ and I believe I may say, without boasting, 

1 The one noted in the chapter on " The Wood-Pewee." 
As the poem on this bird is quoted in that article, it has been 
purposely omitted from this collection of passages. 



A BIRD ANTHOLOGY FROM LOWELL. 245 

that I am familiar with every bird whose charms he 
has chanted. Indeed, he himself boasts modestly, 
as poets may, of his famiharity with the birds in his 
beautiful tribute to George William Curtis, saying, — 

" I learned all weather-signs of day and night ; 
No bird but I could name him by his flight." 

In the first place, let me point out the remarkable 
felicity of his more general references to birds and 
their ways. The music of the minstrels of the air 
often fills his bosom with pleasing but half-regretful 
reminders of other and happier days, as, for 
example, when he penned those exquisite lines, 
''To Perdita, Singing," — 

" She sits and sings, 
With folded wings 
And white arms crost, 
* Weep not for bygone things. 
They are not lost.' " 

Then follow some lines of rare sweetness, the 
concluding ones of which are these, — 

" Every look and every word 
Which thou givest forth to-day, 
Tells of the singing of the bird 
Whose music stilled thy boyish play.'' 

A similar pensive reference is found in our poet's 
ode, "To the Dandelion," which is as deserving 
of admiration as many of the more famous odes 
of English poesy. He thus apostrophizes ''the 
common flower" that fringes "the dusty road with 
harmless gold," — 



246 IN BIRD LAND. 

" My childhood's earliest thoughts are linked with thee ; 
The sight of thee calls back the robin's song, 

Who, from the dark old tree 
Beside the door, sang clearly all day long ; 

And I, secure in childish piety, 
Listened as if I heard an angel sing 

With news from heaven, which he could bring 
Fresh every day to my untainted ears, 
When birds and flowers and I were happy peers." 

A bird often affords our poet a metaphor or a 
simile by which to represent some sad reminiscence 
of his life. Listen to this sweet minor strain, — 

** As a twig trembles, which a bird 

Lights on to sing, then leaves unbent, 
So is my memory thrilled and stirred; — 
I only know she came and went." 

With what a plaintive melody the last line lingers 
in one's mind, like some far-off melancholy strain, 
singing itself over again and again with a persistency 
that will not be hushed, — "I only know she came 
and went.'^ There are times, too, when our bard 
falls into a slightly despondent mood, and even 
then the birds serve to give a turn to his pensive 
reflections, — 

" But each day brings less summer cheer, 
Crimps more our ineffectual spring, 
And something earlier every year 
Our singing birds take wing." 

To my mind, he is less attractive when his verse 
takes on this cheerless hue, and I therefore turn 
gladly to his more jubilant lays, in which he seems 
to have caught the joy of the full-toned bird 



A BIRD ANTHOLOGY FROM LOWELL. 



247 



orchestra, as he does at more than one place in 
"The Vision of Sir Launfal," — 

" The little birds sang as if it were 

The one day of summer in all the year, 
And the very leaves seemed to sing on the trees." 

What bird lover has not often been caught in 
such a mesh of bird song, on a bright day of the 
early springtime ? Even good-natured Hosea Big- 
low cannot always repress his enthusiasm for the 
birds, although he is quite too chary of his allusions 
to them, — that is, too chary for the man who has 
birds on the brain. His unsophisticated sincerity 
cannot brook a perfunctory treatment of Nature's 
blithe minstrels, for he breaks out scornfully in 
denouncing those book-read poets who get "wut 
theyVe airly read" so "worked into their heart 
an' head" that they 

"... can't seem to write but jest on sheers 
With furrin countries or played-out ideers. 



This makes 'em talk o' daisies, larks, an* things, 
Ez though we 'd nothin' here that blows an' sings. 
Why, I 'd give more for one live bobolink 
Than a square mile o' larks in printer's ink ! " 

Hosea, in spite of the meagreness of his allusions 
to bird life, still proves beyond a doubt that he is 
conversant with the migratory habits of the birds, 
and that he has been watching a little impatiently 
for their vernal appearance in his native fields and 
woods, as every bird student who reads the following 
lines will testify, — 



248 IN BIRD LAND. 

" The birds are here, for all the season 's late ; 
They take the sun's height, an' don' never wait; 
Soon 'z he officially declares it 's spring, 
Their light hearts lift 'em on a north'ard wing. 
An' th' ain't an acre, fur ez you can hear, 
Can't by the music tell the time o' year." 

Sometimes a single line or phrase proclaims our 
poet's loving familiarity with the feathered worlds 
and gives his verse an outdoor flavor that positively 
puts a tonic into the appreciative reader's veins, 
almost driving him out beneath the shining vault of 
the sky ; as when the poet refers to *^ the cock's 
shrill trump that tells of scattered corn ; " or to 
*^ the thin- winged swallow skating on the air ; '' or 
laments because ^^snowfiakes fledge the summer's 
nest;" or remarks incidentally that the ^^ cat-bird 
croons in the lilac-bush ; " or that ^' the robin sings, 
as of old, from the limb ; " or that " the single crow 
a single caw lets fall ; " or asks, " Is a thrush 
gurgling from the brake?" How vivid and full of 
woodsy suggestion are the following lines from that 
captivating poem, ^^ Al Fresco " : — 

" The only hammer that I hear 
Is wielded by the woodpecker. 
The single noisy calling his 
In all our leaf-hid Sybaris." 

Nothing could be more characteristic of wood- 
peckerdom than that quatrain. Still more rhyth- 
mical are the first six lines — a metrical sextette 
that sing themselves — of the poem entitled . ** The 
Fountain of Youth," — 



A BIRD ANTHOLOGY FROM LOWELL. 249 

*' 'T is a woodland enchanted ! 
By no sadder spirit 
Than blackbirds and thrushes, 
That whistle to cheer it 
All day in the bushes, 
This woodland is haunted/' 

And what a picture for the fancy is limned in the 
following lines : — 

" Like rainbow-feathered birds that bloom 
A moment on some autumn bough, 
That, with the spurn of their farewell, 
Sheds its last leaves ! " 

A flashlight view that, of one of the rarest scenes 
in Nature. The poet must have bent over more 
than one callow brood of nestlings, or he never 
could have written so knowingly about them, — 

" Blind nestlings, unafraid, 
Stretch up wide-mouthed to every shade 
By which their downy dream is stirred. 
Taking it for the mother bird ; " 

for such is the unsuspicious habit of most bantlings 

in the nest. It would be difficult to find a defter 

touch than that with which Lowell describes a 

resplendent morning, ^^ omnipotent with sunshine," 

whose '^ quick charm . . . wiled the bluebird to his 

whiff of song," 

" While aloof 
An oriole clattered and a robin shrilled, 
Denouncing me an alien and a thief ; '* 

particularly if it is borne in mind that the allusion is 
to the chattering alarm-call of the oriole and the 
robin. Exquisite indeed is the description of — 



250 IN BIRD LAND. 

" The bluebird shifting his light load of song 
From post to post along the cheerless fence ; 

while it would puzzle one to find anywhere a more 
poetical and at the same time realistic portrayal 
than this, — 

" Far distant sounds the hidden chickadee 
Close at my side," — 

especially if the reference be to the little black- 
capped titmouse's minor whistle, which has a 
strange, sad remoteness when heard in the sylvan 
depth, reminding one of the myth of Orpheus 
mourning for his lost love. No less vivid are the 

lines, — 

" The phoebe scarce whistles 
Once an hour to his fellow ; '* 

or these, — 

"Overhead the balanced hen-hawk slides, 
Twinned in the river's heaven below ; " 

or this description of a winter scene, - — 

'* I stood and watched by the window 
The noiseless work of the sky, 
And the sudden flurries of snow-birds 
Like brown leaves whirling by." 

Hark ! — 

" All pleasant winds from south and west 
With lullabies thine ears beguiled. 
Rocking thee in thine oriole's nest, 
Till Nature looked at thee and smiled." 

Listen again ! — 

" The sobered robin, hunger-silent now, 
Seeks cedar-berries blue, his autumn cheer." 



A BIRD ANTHOLOGY FROM LOWELL. 251 

If one were only there to see : — 

" High flaps in sparkling blue the far-heard crow, 
The silvered flats gleam frostily below ; 

Suddenly drops the gull, and breaks the glassy tide." 

Of course even the casual observer has often 
been aware of the fact that " the robin is plastering 
his house hard by;" and many of us may have 
looked upon a winter scene like the following, but 
I am sure we never thought of painting it in just 
such tropical colors, — 

" The river was numb, and could not speak, 
For the weaver Winter its shroud had spun ; 
A single crow on the tree-top bleak 

From his shining feathers shed off the cold sun/' 

Hosea Biglow seems to think he knows where 
to find 

" Some blooms thet make the season suit the mind. 
An' seem to match the doubting bluebird's notes," 

liverworts and bloodroots being among those talis- 
manic plants. There is a world of serenity in the 
following metrical etching, which makes one almost 
long to die and be forever at rest : — 

" Happy their end 
Who vanish down life's evening stream 
Placid as swans that drift in dream 
Round the next river-bend." 

Our poet had the charming habit of making some 
characteristic bird- way do deft metaphorical duty in 



252 



IN BIRD LAND. 



his verse, like the skilful weaver who runs a line of 
exquisite tint through his weft. Here is an instance, 
found in the poem called **Threnodia/' — 

** I loved to see the infant soul 

Peep timidly from out its nest, 

His lips, the while, 

Fluttering with half-fledged words, 

Or hushing to a smile 

That more than words expressed, 

When his glad mother on him stole 

And snatched him to her breast ! 

O, thoughts were brooding in those eyes, 

That would have soared like strong-winged birds 

Far, far into the skies, 

Gladding the earth with song 

And gushing harmonies." 

Here is another fine simile, — 

" As if a lark should suddenly drop dead 

While the blue air yet trembled with its song, 
So snapped at once that music's golden thread." 

In the following stanzas on '^ The Falcon '* — 
used as a metaphor for Truth — there is a captivat- 
ing multiplicity of figures, — 

" I know a falcon sv/ift and peerless 
As e'er was cradled in the pine ; 
No bird had ever eye so fearless, 
Or wing so strong as this of mine. 

** The winds not better love to pilot 
A cloud with molten gold o'errun, 
Than him, a little burning islet, 
A star above the coming sun. 



A BIRD ANTHOLOGY FROM LOWELL. 253 

" For with a lark^s heart he doth tower, 
By a glorious upward instinct drawn ; 
No bee nestles deeper in the flower 
Than he in the bursting rose of dawn." 

It almost throws one into '^ a midsummer night's 
dream " to read this picturesque line, — 

" The clouds like swans drift down the streaming atmosphere/* 

That must have been an expressive face indeed 
whose features were 

" As full of motion as a nest 
That palpitates with unfledged birds/' 

albeit one may be permitted to hope, without irrev- 
erence, that it made a more attractive picture than 
did the callow youngsters gaping and wabbling in 
their nursery. But here is a delineation of bird 
life so graphically and richly colored that one longs 
for the brush of the artist to transfer it to canvas. 
Listen ! Hsten 1 There is an exhilarant in the 
atmosphere. 

" The little bird sits at his door in the sun, 
Atilt like a blossom among the leaves, 
And lets his illumined being o'errun 

With the deluge of summer it receives ; 
His mate feels the eggs beneath her wings, 
And the heart in her dumb breast flutters and sings ; 
He sings to the wide world, and she to her nest, — 
In the nice ear of Nature which song is the best ? " 

The last two Hnes, by the way, are in perfect keep- 
ing with Mr. Lowell's generous instincts, which were 
always on the side of the lowly and unappreciated. 



2 54 ^^V BIRD LAND. 

Seductive as the figure is, there seems to be some- 
thing sHghtly forced in the poet's conceit that the 
thrushes sing because they have been " pierced 
through with June's dehcious sting," unless it might 
be justified on the principle that pain and trial often 
enhance moral values. 

There is a beautiful stanza in the poem, '^ On 
Planting a Tree at Inverara," — 

" Hither the busy birds shall flutter, 
With, the light timber for their nests, 
And, pausing from their labor, utter 
The morning sunshine in their breasts/' 

With all his poet's soul Lowell loved the serene, 
as when he congratulates himself on having left the 
grating noise and stifling smoke of London, and 
found in some sequestered haunt 

'^ Air and quiet too ; 
Air filtered through the beech and oak ; 
Quiet by nothing harsher broke 
Than wood-dove's meditative coo." 

The word '' meditative " is extremely felicitous, 
but no more so than the hop-skip-and-spring of 
the following lines from a Commencement dinner 
poem : — 

" I 've a notion, I think, of a good dinner speech, 
Tripping light as a sandpiper over the beach. 
Swerving this way and that, as the wave of the moment 
Washes out its slight trace with a dash of whim's foam on \ 
And leaving on memory's rim just a sense 
Something graceful had gone by, a live present tense ; 
Not poetry, — no, not quite that, but as good, 
A kind of winged prose that could fly if it would." 



A BIRD ANTHOLOGY FROM LOWELL. 255 

Like all discriminating lovers of ^^ Nature's blithe 
commoners/^ Lowell had his favorites, whose 
praises he frequently rung with a sincerity that 
cannot be doubted for a moment. He was espe- 
cially partial to the bobolink. He must have often 
peeped into the 

** Tussocks that house blithe Bob o' Lincoln," 

or his Muse would not have been so adept and 
faithful in her hymning descriptions. We will lend 
a listening ear while she sings her chansons on the 
virtues of the bird our poet loved so truly. First, 
I will call attention to the following portraiture of 
that cavalier of the meadow, the male bobolink, at 
the season when there are bantlings in the grass- 
domed nest which demand his paternal care, as 
well as that of his faithful spouse, — 

" Meanwhile that devil-may-care, the bobolink, 
Remembering duty, in mid-quaver stops 

Just ere he sweeps o'er rapture's tremulous brink, 
And 'twixt the windrows most demurely drops, 

A decorous bird of business, who provides 

For his brown mate and fledgelings six besides, 
And looks from right to left, a farmer 'mid his crops." 

One can almost see the poet leaning against the 
rail fence of the clover field, with pencil in hand, 
drawing the portrait of the bird which is posing 
unconsciously before him, so true is his delineation 
of bobolink life. But to find Lowell at his best you 
must read his description of Robert o' Lincoln at 
his best. Hark ! — 



256 IN BIRD LAND. 

" A week ago the sparrow was divine ; 
The bluebird, shifting his light load of song 
From post to post along the cheerless fence, 
Was as a rhymer ere the poet come ; 
But now, oh, rapture ! sunshine winged and voiced, 
Pipe blown through by the warm, wild breath of the West, 
Shepherding his soft droves of fleecy cloud, 
Gladness of woods, skies, waters, all in one, 
The bobolink has come, and, like the soul 
Of the sweet season, vocal in a bird, 
Gurgles in ecstasy we know not what, 
^2i-wQ.June! Dear June t Now God be praised for Jiine?^ 

The only fault to be found with this exquisite 
tribute is that it is rather too much involved to 
glide melodiously from the Hps, or be quite clear 
to the mind until after a second or third reading. 
Not so picturesque, but more simple and musical, 
is this bit, — 

^* From blossom-clouded orchards, far away 
The bobolink tinkled. '' 

The provincial tongue of Hosea Biglow presents 
us with the following rare bit of portraiture, which 
has all the strength and freshness of a painting from 

Nature : — 

*' June's bridesman, poet o' the year. 
Gladness on wings, the bobolink is here ; 
Half-hid in tip-top apple-bloom he sings, 
Or climbs against the breeze with quiverin' wings, 
Or, givin' way to 't in mock despair, 
Runs down, a brook o' laughter, thro' the air," — 

a rhythmical tribute that is both an honor to the 
poet and a compUment to the bobolink. 



A BIRD ANTHOLOGY FROM LOWELL. 257 

The Baltimore oriole also claims Mr. Lowell's 
admiration. There is one descriptive passage rela- 
tive to this bird that, in my opinion, goes ahead 
of even the famous bobolink eulogy just quoted : 

" Hush ! 'T is he ! 
My oriole, my glance of summer fire, 
Is come at last, and, ever on the watch, 
Twitches the pack-thread I had lightly wound 
About the bough to help his housekeeping, — 
Twitches and scouts by turns, blessing his luck, 
Yet fearing me who laid it in his way, 
Nor, more than wiser we in our affairs, 
Divines the providence that hides and helps. 
Heave, ho I Heave, ho ! he whistles as the twine 
Slackens its hold ; oitce more, now ! and a flash 
Lightens across the sunlight to the elm 
Where his mate dangles at her cup of felt. 
Nor all his booty is the thread ; he trails 
My loosened thought with it along the air. 
And I must follow, would I ever find 
The inward rhyme to all this wealth of life." 

The last sentence is a deft turn at weaving, oriole- 
like, a thread of moral reflection into a fine piece of 
description. Even in his later years Lowell could 
not throw off the spell that this summer flake of 
gold had thrown over him ; for in his volume called 
'^ Heartsease and Rue " he has inserted a little 
poem entitled ^^The Nest " that for rhythmical flow 
and beauty has not been excelled by any of his 
earlier productions. He first describes the nest in 
May as follows : — 

" Then from the honeysuckle gray 
The oriole with experienced quest 

n 



258 IN BIRD LAND. 

Twitches the fibrous bark away, 

The cordage of his hammock nest, 
Cheering his labor with a note 
Rich as the orange of his throat. 

'* High o'er the loud and dusty road 
The soft gray cup in safety swings, 
To brim ere August with its load 

Of downy breasts and throbbing wings, 
O'er which the friendly elm-tree heaves 
An emerald roof with sculptured leaves. 

Thy duty, winged flame of Spring, 
Is but to love and fly and sing." 

Then he chants a pathetic " paHnode/V as he 
calls it, in December, when 

^' . . . homeless winds complain along 
The columned choir once thrilled with song. 

"And thou, dear nest, whence joy and praise 

The thankful oriole used to pour, 
Swing'st empty while the north winds chase 

Their snowy swarms from Labrador. 
But, loyal to the happy past, 
I love thee still for what thou wast.^' 

Besides the bobolink and the oriole, the black- 
bird is often made to do charming duty in Lowell's 
verse. Every student of the birds has often seen 
the picture described by the line, — 

*' Alders the creaking red-wings sink on ; " 

or heard 

"... the blackbirds clatt'rin* in tall trees 
An' settlin' things in windy Congresses, — 
Queer politicians, though, for I'll be skinned 
Ef all on 'em don't head against the wind." 



A BIRD ANTHOLOGY FROM LOWELL. 259 

A number of quotations in which the robin figures 
conspicuously have already been given. One more 
occurs to me, — that in which Hosea Biglow 
exclaims, — 

*' Thet ^s robin-redbreast^s almanick ; he knows 
That arter this ther' 's only blossom-snows ; 
So, choosin' out a handy crotch an' spouse, 
He goes to plast'rin^ his adobe house." 

But hold 1 here is still another : — 

" The Maple puts her corals on in May, 
While loitering frosts about the lowlands cling. 
To be in tune with what the robins sing, 
Plastering new log-huts ^mid her branches gray.'* 

It can scarcely be hoped to make this anthology 
from Lowell exhaustive, for almost every time I 
turn the leaves of his poetical works I stumble upon 
some reference to the birds before unnoted ; but 
this article would be incomplete should one of his 
choicest bits of metrical description, which must 
bring both anthology and book to a close, be 
omitted. It is found in the poem entitled ^' The 
Nightingale in the Study," the whole of which must 
be read to catch the drift of its moral teaching. 
The poet doubtless attributes more magnanimity to 
the cat-bird than that carolist is entitled to, — but 
no matter; the Muses cannot be over-precise. 
Here is a charmer : — 

" * Come forth ! ' my cat-bird calls to me, 
' And hear me sing a cavatina 
That, in this old familiar tree, 
Shall hang a garden of Alcina. 



2 6o IN BIRD LAND. 

" * Or, if to me you will not hark, 

By Beaver Brook a thrush is ringing 
Till all the alder-coverts dark 

Seem sunshine-dappled with his singing. 

"'Come out beneath the unmastered sky, 
With its emancipating spaces, 
And learn to sing as well as I, 
Without premeditated graces. 



** ' Come out ! with me the oriole cries, 
Escape the demon that pursues you ! 
And hark I the cuckoo weatherwise, 

Still hiding, farther onward wooes you.' " 

But this time, for a wonder, the poet declines the 
invitation to go out of doors, because, as he says, 
*^ a bird is singing in my brain ; " and yet he 
does so with evident regret, for he exclaims, in 
response to the cat-bird's plea, — 

'* 'Alas, dear friend, that, all my days, 
Has poured from that syringa thicket 
The quaintly discontinuous lays 
To which I hold a season ticket, — 

'* ' A season ticket cheaply bought 
With a dessert of pilfered berries, 
And who so oft my love has caught 
With morn and evening voluntaries, 

" ' Deem me not faithless, if all day 
Among my dusty books I linger. 
No pipe, like thee, for June to play 
With fancy-led, half-conscious finger. 



A BIRD ANTHOLOGY FROM LOWELL. 261 

" ' A bird is singing in my brain. 

And bubbling o'er with mingled fancies,' 
Gay, tragic, rapt, right heart of Spain 
Fed with the sap of old romances ; ' '* 

and so for once the poet of the birds cannot be lured 
from his study, where he has been caught in the weft 
of old Moorish and Castilian legends, and he con- 
cludes his apology with the only slighting allusion 
in all his verses, so far as I have discovered, to his 
beloved winged minstrels : — 

" * Bird of to-day, thy songs are stale 
To his, my singer of all weathers, 
My Calderon, my nightingale, 

My Arab soul in Spanish feathers. 

" * Ah, friend, these singers dead so long, 
And still, God knows, in purgatory. 
Give its best sweetness to all song. 
To Nature's self her better glory.' ^' 

Thus the Lowell anthology has swollen to a veri- 
table anthem, and gives to this modest volume a 
peroration that it can never hope to deserve. 



APPENDIX. 



MY BIRD LIST. 

''"PHE following is an alphabetical list of the birds 
-*- which I have seen in my neighborhood, Springfield, 
Clark County, Ohio. It is given for the convenience of 
bird students, who are always interested in the locale of 
the feathered tribe. The small figure (i) indicates 
residents all the year round ; (2), summer residents ; 
(3), winter residents ; (4), migrants. 



Bittern, American .2 

Blackbird, red-winged.^ 

Bluebird ^ (occasionally win- 
ter resident). 

Bobolink.2 

Bob-white.^ 

Bunting, black - throated ; 
Dickcissel."^ 

Butcher-bird.4 

Buzzard, turkey .^ 

Cat-bird.2 
Cedar-bird.* 
Chat, yellow-breasted.2 
Chickadee, black-capped.^ 
Cow-bird.2 
Creeper, brown.-^ 
Crow.i 

Cuckoo, black -billed.2 
yellow-billed.'^ 



Dickcissel.2 

Dove, turtle or mourning.^ 

Duck, wood.2 

Finch, purple.* 
Flicker.i 
Flycatcher, Acadian.* 

crested.2 

least.* 

Traill's.* 

yellow-bellied.* 

Gnatcatcher, blue-gray.* 
Goldfinch, American.^ 
Grass-finch.'^ 
Grossbeak, cardinal.^ 

rose-beasted.* 
Grouse, ruffed.^ 

Hawk, red-shouldered.'^ 
sharp-shinned.3 



264 



MY BIRD LIST. 



Hawk, sparrow.i 
Heron, great blue.^ 

green.2 
Humming-bird, ruby- 
throated.2 

Indigo-bird.2 

Jay, blue.^ 

J unco ; snowbird.^ 

Killdeer.2 
Kingbird.2 
Kingfisher, belted.^ 
Kinglet, golden-crownea.^ 
ruby-crowned.* 

Lark, horned or shore.^ 
meadow.2 

Martin, purple.^ 

Night-hawk.2 

Nuthatch, white-breasted.^ 
red-breasted.* 

Oriole, Baltimore.^ 

orchard.2 
Oven bird.2 
Owl, screech.^ 

Pewee, wood.^ 
Phoebe ; house pewee.^ 
Pipit, American. 3 

Redstart.* 

Robin 2 (sometimes in win- 
ter). 

Sandpiper, spotted.^ 
Sapsucker, yellow-bellied.^ 



Shrike, loggerhead.* 
Sparrow, chipping.^ 

English.i 

field.2 

fox,* 

grasshopper.2 

lark.* 

Savanna.* 

song.i 

swamp.* 

tree.^ 

white-crowned.* 

white-throated.* 
Swallow, bank.2 

barn. 2 

cliff or cave. 

white-bellied or 
tree.2 
Swift, chimney.2 

Tanager, scarlet.^ 
Titmouse, tufted.^ 
Thrasher, brown.^ 
Thrush, hermit.* 

Wilson's or veery.* 

wood.2 
Towhee ; chewink.^ 

Vireo, blue-headed.* 
red-eyed.2 
warbling.2 
white-eyed.* 
yellow-throated-* 

Warbler, bay-breasted.* 
black and white.* 
Blackburnian,* 
black-poll.* 
black-throated blue.* 
black-throated green.* 
blue-winged.* 



MY BIRD LIST. 



265 



Warbler, Canadian.* 
cerulean.* 
chestnut-sided.* 
Connecticut.* 
golden-winged.* 
hooded.* 
Kirtland's.* 
magnolia.* 
Maryland yellow- 

throat.2 
mourning.* 
myrtle * 
Nashville.* 
palm or red-poll.* 
Tennessee.* 
Wilson's ; green 
black-capped.* 



Warbler, worm-eating.* 

yellow or summer.^ 
Water-thrush.* 

Louisiana.* 
Whippoorwill.2 
Woodpecker, downy.^ 

golden-winged ; flicker.^ 

hairy.i 

red-bellied ; zebra-bird.^ 

red-headed.2 

yellow-bellied.* 
Wren, Bewick's.^ 

Carolina.! 

house.2 

short-billed marsh.* 

winter.* 



INDEX. 



Accentor, 198. 
Addison, quoted, 167. 
Allen, J. A., quoted, 80. 

Bird baths, 15, 3S, 39, 51,204. 

Bird colonies, 42-44. 

Bird migration, 64, 76-86. 

Bird plumage, 87-91. 

Bird roosts, 1 16-125. 

Bird sadness, 206, 207. 

Bird song, my creed regarding, 

13^ 14- 
Birds of Paradise, 166. 
Blackbirds, 179, 248, 257. 
crow, 29, 34, 35, 63. 
red-winged, 29, 65, 120, 125. 
yellow-headed, 234. 
Bluebirds, 28, SS, 164, 189, 208, 

248, 249. 
Bobolink, 199, 246, 254, 255. 
Bolles, Frank, 29. 
Brewster, William, 84-86. 
Browning, Robert, quoted, 149. 
Browning, Mrs. E. B., quoted, 

168. 
Bryant, W. C, quoted, 81. 
Bunting, black-throated, 112. 
cow, 96, 97, 125, 177, 179, 

198. 
towhee, 66, 89, 93, 113, 155, 
162, 199. 
Burns, Robert, quoted, 206. 
Burroughs, John, 29, 164, 210. 

Cat-bird, 24-26, 82, 125, 142, 

258-260. 
Chapman., Frank M., 80. 



Chat, yellow-breasted, 102, 153, 

192. 
Chewink, 62, 249. 
Chickadee, 42, 44, 216, 249. 
Coleridge, quoted, 207. 
Collectors, 213. 
Creeper, brown, 15, 17-20, 44, 

202, 218. 
Cross-bill, 208. 
Crow, 153, 250. 
Cuckoo, yellow-billed, 173, 186. 

Dove, turtle, 13, 63, 120, 171, 
172. 

Emerson, 42, 52, 243. 

quoted, 10, 11, 49, 140, 157, 
224, 

Falcon, 251. 
Finch, cut-throat, 205. 

purple, 72. 
Fish, Eldridge E., 94, 97, 208. 
Flicker; yellow-hammer, 57, 124, 

161, 204. 
Flycatcher, Traill's, 85. 

Gibson, W. H., quoted, 92. 
Gnat-catcher, blue-gray, 143-1^5, 

194. 
Goldfinch, 74, T04-109, 113, 186, 

231, 234. 
Grackle, purple (see Crow black' 

bird), 35. 
Grass-finch, 68, 88, 112, 118. 
Grossbeak, Brazilian, 231. 

cardinal, 46, 62, 90, 113, 
i55;23i. 



268 



INDEX, 



Grossbeak,evening, 71. 

rose-breasted, 64, 'j'}^. 
Grouse, ruffed, 165. 

Hawk, hen, 249. 

sparrow, 209. 
Heron, great blue, 236. 

green, 154, 180-182. 
Howells, W. D.j quoted, 11. 
Hummers, 164. 

Indigo-bird, Z^^ 102, 152, 234. 

Jay, blue, 28, 195, 209, 233. 
J uncos {see Snow-birds), 51, 53- 
56, 82, 118, 218, 228. 

KiLLDEER, 28, 65, 99, 182. 
King-bird ; bee-martin, 196. 
Kingfisher, Australian, 2.-^-}^. 

belted, 183. 
Kinglets, 42, 165. 

golden-crowned, 36, 44, 81, 
203, 208. 

ruby-crowned, 91, 203. 

Langille, J. H., quoted, 165. 
Lanier, Sidney, quoted, 14-15, 

132. 
Larcom, Lucy, quoted, 68. 
Lark, 246, 251, 252. 

meadow, 65, 84, 112, 118, 
125, 172. 
Longfellow, quoted, 163. 
Lowell, 40, 45. 

quoted, 113, 127, 129, 130, 
174, 197, 221, 242-260. 

Martin, house or purple, 240. 

Mexican stars, 165. 

Milton, quoted, 199. 

Montreal, 225. 

Mount Royal, Canada, 226-230. 



Nests, 20, 92-109, 16S-1S4. 
Night-hawk, 134-139. 
Nonpareil, 211, 231. 
Nuthatch, white-breasted, 15, 29, 
3i» 33; 42; 45j 47,2X1. 

Oriole, Baltimore, 64, 99, 113, 
248, 256, 259. 
orchard, 152, 179. 
Oven-bird, 141. 
Owls, 121, 237. 

Parrots, 235. 

PeUcans, 236. « 

Pewee, wood, 113, 114, 126-133, 

189, 195, 219, 243. 
Pheasant, silver, 233. 
Phoebe, 69, 126, 188, 219, 249. 

Redstart, 74, 91, 229. 
Robin, 27, 65, ^Zi "2, 120, 199, 
210, 234, 245, 248, 249, 250, 



Sandpiper, 253. 

Sangster, Margaret E., quoted, 

93- 
Shakespeare, quoted, 211. 
Snov/-bird {see Junco), 49, 51, 

249. 
Sparrow, bush, 12, 68, %% ^ 99, 
102-104, 105, 106, 109, 
112, 120. 
chipping, 69, %Z, 20^. 
EngHsh, 238. 
fox, Gj. 

grasshopper, 155. 
lark, 112, 118. 
song, 13, 15, 46, 56, 5 8,60- 
62, 63, 65, 66, 114, 119, 
152, 163, 228. 
swamp, 221. 

tree, 15, 49-51, 53, 55, 56, 
59-60, 116. 



. INDEX, 



269 



Sparrow, white-crowned, 90. 
white-throated, 120, 223, 232, 
236. 
Starling, English, 231. 
Swallow, bank, 98. 
Swan, 250, 252. 

Tanager, scarlet, 65, 89, 212. 
Thrasher, brown, 14, 64, 81, 82, 
94, 120, 121, 142, 147-150, 
189, 201, 205. 
Titmouse, black-capped, 15, 31, 
32, 64, 113, 179. 
crested, 20, 32, 35, 45. 
Thrush, Wilson's, 226, 227. 
wood, 95, 122, 155, 158, 169- 
171, 178, 189, 205, 259. 
Torrey, Bradford, 39, 133, 148, 
222. 

ViREO, blue-headed, 71, 72. 
red-eyed, 72, 85, 176, 229. 
warbling, 99, 151, 195. 

Wallace, A. R., quoted, 166. 
Warblers, 1%, 82, 85, m, 90, 216. 

bay-breasted, 74. 

Blackburnian, 219. 

black-throated blue, 219. 

black- throated green, 219, 
220, 229. 



Warblers, blue-winged, "^o. 

cerulean, 114, 219. 

chestnut-sided, 114, 219, 229. 

creeping, 219, 228. 

hooded, '^i^ 145-147, 198. 

Ken tuck}', 155. 

Maryland yellow-throat, 85, 
9I; 113, 152. 

mourning, 83. 

myrtle, -^Z^ 219. 

parula, 2 [9. 

summer, 96-98. 

worm-eating, 143. 
Water -thrush, Louisiana, 157. 
Waxbills, 230. 
Weaver-birds, 235. 
Whippoorwill, 134, 148. 
Wood-dove, 253. 
Woodpeckers, 17, 42, 124, 247, 

downy, 15, 46, 162. 

hairy, 32, 46. 

red-bellied; zebra-bird, 21., 

red-headed, 32, 36-38, 89, 
123, 125, 141, 185, 196, 
198, 202, 

yellow-bellied ; sap-sucker, 
29, 30. 
Wren, Bewick's, 39, 64, 69, 142. 

Carolina, 41, 113, 156. 

Zoological Garden, a visit 
to, 230-239. 



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